Visiting Scholar Series: Ben Barson

Abstract: "'From verb to noun' means the erasure of black inventiveness through white appropriation." So wrote Nathaniel Mackey in response to the reification of African American cultural strategies into static, reified, and policed forms. To counteract this tendency, Mackey called on musicians and cultural workers to "confront the neotraditionalism that has taken hold of late with a counter-tradition of marronage, divergence, flight, and fugitiv...