Transbluesency originates from a Duke Ellington jazz composition on his 1946 Carnegie Hall LP, and is also the title of Amiri Baraka’s body of poetry published in 1995. The term invokes the blues, a centuries-old African-American form of poetic storytelling, as a carrier of joys, sorrows, and knowledge–with the understanding that music and rhythm are the only containers big enough to hold the vast complexity of black histories. This lecture investigates crucial connections between trans-Atlantic and cosmopolitan songs of Senegalese blues singer, Aminata Fall and of African American blues singers Ida Cox and Bessie Smith; proto-feminist texts via blues songs that are lyrically, theoretically and sonically resonant with one another; similar instrumentations and technical innovation of the string instrument via the kora, the banjo, and balafon (modern bass); aural and cultural patterns demonstrating the strong ties between trans-Atlantic and Afropolitan tradition; and ways in which diasporic and continental blues traditions historically influenced one another.

Transbluesency: a poetic you can see through is an invitation to witness multidisciplinary artistic practices that question written texts/printed matter as the central modality of ethnomusicology and poetics research. Lecturer, Savanna Morgan, and guest selector present poems at the intersection of dance, music, and film in this performance-workshop, where the audience is also invited to join in on conversations between minds and bodies.