Conference Agenda

Organized by the AMS Music and Marxism Study Group.

Marx's discussion of "so-called original accumulation" in Capital vol. 1 describes how the dispossession of peasants from the land during the enclosure movements led to the formation of both a proletariat divorced from the means of production and a capitalist class that came "dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt." More recently, scholars and activists have drawn on the concept to explicate a range of global phenomena: colonial land grabs; the displacement and extirpation of Indigenous groups; the formation of surplus populations under racial capitalism; women's relegation to the unpaid labor of social reproduction; and the ongoing plunder of natural resources. While such extensions to the concept of original accumulation have not been without controversy, the debates they have generated underline its continuing importance in understanding not just how capitalism came into being, but also its ongoing reproduction.

This roundtable examines original accumulation as it relates to music. It brings together six panelists: Sandra Baena-Velazquez (NYU), Derek Baron (University of Pennsylvania), Matt Stahl (UWO), Esther Kurtz (Washington University), Davindar Singh (Heidelberg University), and Serene Gonzalez (Georgetown). Each will give a 10-minute presentation followed by 30 minutes of discussion, moderated by Sumanth Gopinath (University of Minnesota Twin Cities).

Derek Baron examines the historic role of copyright law in music's fitful incorporation into the regime of private property, while Matt Stahl pivots from copyright to labor law, highlighting its role in regulation the social relations of music making. Serene Gonzalez will discuss the transition from musical labor's direct dependency on aristocratic patronage to indirect, market-mediated dependency in the 18th century. Davindar Singh turns to India's Punjab region and the everyday realities of forcible adverse possession ("kabza" in Punjabi) that musicians, among others, confront. In their presentation, Sandra Baena-Velazquez examines how flamenco can simultaneously record dispossession, become a target of cultural expropriation, and serve as a resource for contesting those processes. Finally, Esther Kurtz extends Denise Ferreira da Silva’s Black feminist method of “reading the dead” to reconceptualize jazz’s value, listening for both the violent conditions that made accumulation from the music possible and ruptures from global capital.