Martin Scherzinger explores some elements of African dance music through the lens of Zimbabwean matepe and mbira music, bringing cultural and mathematical insights to bear in an engagement with this vital music. This lecture was presented as part of the Library of Congress Bibliodiscotheque series.
Speaker Biography: Martin Scherzinger specializes in sound studies, music, media and politics of the 20th and 21st centuries, with a particular interest in the music of European modernism and after, as well as African music and transnational musical fusions. His research includes the examination of links between political economy and digital sound technologies, the poetics of copyright law in an international frame, the relation between aesthetics and censorship, the sensory limits of mass-mediated music, the mathematical geometries of musical time and the history of sound in philosophy. This work represents an attempt to understand what we might call contemporary “modalities of listening–that is, the economic, political, metaphysical and technological determinants of both mediated and (what is perceived as) immediate auditory experience. He is a graduate of Columbia University and an associate professor of media, culture and communication at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.
For transcript and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=7988
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