4:00 PM
Harkness Chapel, Classroom
Sponsored by the Center for Popular Music Studies
Music colloquia provide a weekly forum for presentation and discussion of recent research by distinguished visitors and CWRU faculty and graduate students in musicology, historical performance practice, and music education.
All talks happen on Fridays at 4:00 PM (Eastern) in Harkness Chapel, Classroom, and are open to the public unless noted otherwise.
About the Talk
“Art Bling: Warhol, Basquiat, and Hip Hop”
The Pop artist Andy Warhol (d. 1987) has had a surprising afterlife in the lyrics of hip hop musicians, often paired with the name-checking of Jean Michel Basquiat. My presentation will place this phenomenon in the context of Fab Five Freddie’s Campbell’s Soup Can graffiti, Warhol’s collaborations with Jean-Michel Basquiat, and other creative works and associations that paved a way for Warhol, a white and profoundly queer artist, to enter Black cultural discourse. I will trace how citations of Warhol, in addition to signifying wealth and status, also bring to the fore the deep and abiding implications of the insider / outsider division embedded within Warhol’s many art and media projects, here affixed to the structure of systemic racism.
About the Speaker
Judith A. Peraino is professor of music at Cornell University. Her publications include articles on medieval music, Blondie, David Bowie, PJ Harvey, Mick Jagger, Pussy Riot, and early synthpop. She is the author of two books: Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig (2006), and Giving Voice to Love: Song and Self-Expression from the Troubadours to Guillaume de Machaut (2011). She has also given talks at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, SXSW in Austin, and the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) in Seattle. Her current book project explores Andy Warhol’s involvement with rock and pop musicians in the 1970s and ‘80s.
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