What does it mean to sound African or Black musically? What sonic legacies were disrupted by enslavement and imperialism, and what new vocal and musical identities can be reclaimed today?
Seyi Ajibade (Ph.D. student in Ethnomusicology, Department of Music) and Audrey Pernell (MFA student in Performance Pedagogy, Department of Theatre Arts explored these questions and more in th
eir TC2-award winning project proposal titled Recentering Blackness in Spirituals and African Art Music.
Ajibade and Pernell seek to answer these questions by engaging two distinct but interwoven diasporic sound worlds: the spirituals that emerged from the enslaved African American experience and the African art music that developed through African composers’ engagement with European classical forms. Rather than examining these traditions in parallel, we approach them as points of convergence—sites of improvisation, memory, adaptation, and resistance. Through combined methodologies in ethnomusicology and theatre pedagogy, we explore how Black musical expression navigates constraint and creativity, continuity and reinvention. We aim to develop an Afrocentric pedagogical-performance model that bridges historical and contemporary practices, expressing the emotional, cultural, and political resonances between them. In doing so, we hope to fill a gap we perceive in our primary fields of music and theatre: the conscious practical application of Afrocentric principles in creative and pedagogical processes. The project manifests as an interactive, embodied performance/workshop that integrates music, storytelling, and collective experimentation. Drawing from our respective training in music and theatre, we will collaboratively design a process that invites audiences to participate as learners and co-creators—challenging conventional divisions between artist and observer, teacher and student. Through collective improvisation, emotional exploration, and critical reflection, we seek to reimagine African ideals, honoring the past while envisioning new futures for Black sound, performance, and identity.