Conference Agenda

Organized by the Ecomusicology Study Group.

The AMS Ecomusicology Study Group invites new and current members to our business meeting, which will open with a lecture by scholar and musician Luis Chavez, postdoctoral fellow specializing in American and Indigenous Studies at Bard College:

In Xúchitl, in Cuicatl: Listening to Carbon through Nahuatl Metaphor

Common to all life on earth, carbon is the key node of this presentation’s articulation of an ecomusicological and experiential approach to different methodologies within musicology, placing the human and histories of encounter with the land and its resources in conversation with a wide range of methods of making meaning, being in the world, and articulating value(s). Inspired by Guillermo Bonfil Batalla’s work about the people of the México profundo (1996), this presentation explores the audibility of Indigenous ancestry and place making through music, sound, and dance. I examine fiesta (ceremony) and a popular musical style known as tamborazo-Zacatecano in the Mexican pueblos of Xalpa (Jalpa), Xuchipila (Juchipila), and Moyahua in the southern region of the state of Zacatecas (Caxcan region). These local fiestas and danzas (dance) concentrate public and private epistemological articulations of Caxcan Indigeneity, revealing a radical relationship between sound, body, memory, and land. I build on previous Indigenous music research (Diamond 2007; Dylan 2020) to illustrate how musicians and dancers synchronously amplify diverse musical alliances through rooted notions of Indigenous density (Bissett-Perea 2021) in collective memory.

We look forward to a lively Q & A session following Dr. Chavez’s talk. Afterwards, we will hold our annual business meeting, during which we will welcome new members, answer by-law questions, and discuss potential activities for the incoming year and panel topics for AMS 2025.