Bucknell Philosophy Colloquium: "Make It Funky: Soul and Style"

"Make It Funky: Soul and Style"

Paul Taylor (Associate Professor of Philosophy Head of African American Studies at the Pennsylvania State University) 

Thursday, April 25 at 4:30 pm

Willard Smith Library, 125 Vaughan Lit.

"Make It Funky: Soul and Style" uses contemporary research on musical experience to explore one of the familiar themes from the black aesthetic tradition. Racialized blackness has typically been bound up with peculiar ideas about rhythm, musical responsiveness, and dance. I will consider this complex of ideas and assumptions by reading the experience of funk music through some contemporary research in neuroscience and musicology. My aim will be to identify the best story about how this music moves us, and to explain how we can think of music that moves us in this way as black music while still avoiding problematic forms of essentialism.    

Please join us for this last talk in the Spring 2013 Bucknell Philosophy Colloquium Series.  Refreshments will be provided!