Polyvocal Research Lab invites Dr Aurélie Boutant March 28 2026

Title: Voices of afrodescendant ecofeminisms: A journey through poetry and music. In the wake of International Women's Day and in resonance with Black History Month, I propose, as part of this conference, that we turn our attention and listen to musical and poetic works through the voices of Afro-descendant artists such as Mary Grueso Romero, Nidia Góngora, Michèle Henderson and Yilian Cañizares. From Colombia-Pacific to Dominica and Cuba, we will take the pulse of the voices of these singers, poets and musicians who take us on meditative, ancestral and rhythmic journeys to the heart of their cosmovisions and homelands. When listening to their artistic pieces, we will consider the voice as a vibrant channel that serves as an anchor to the artists, allowing them to connect sensorially, memorially and spiritually with the living world around them, of which they are part. In these Afro-Caribbean and Latin American cultures, the African legacy of the call-and-response forms manifest itself in multiple ways—in storytelling, jazz, salsa, drumming, dance, for example. Similarly, through the poetic and musical works of the corpus, we will explore how the nature of these call-and-response exchanges serve to unite, even interconnect, nature and culture, thus working to “heal the fracture” (Ferdinand 2019) created by the paradigm of Western modernity (Deloughrey 2005; 2011) (Escobar 2020). By eroding and destabilizing the boundaries between human and non-human, the voices of the ecofeminist artists are deeply inclusive, in relationship and symbiosis with the living, thus becoming part of a polyphonic and polyrhythmic community woven from musicalities, songs and rhythms that are bot nature and cultural. Aurélie Boutant (PhD Comparative Literature, University of Montreal) #research #caribbean #music #scholar #africa #black #meagansylvester #afro #recherche #investigacion #musica #chercheur #trinidad #tobago #queenscollege #professor #caraibes #musicology #sociology #anthropology #ethnomusicology #NewYork #talk #conference #USA #Calypso #Ragga #Soca #identity #cultures #resistance #popularmusic #musicsociologist #author #cameroon #journalist #podcaster #trinidadandtobago #Steelpan #kaisoJazz #AfricanDiaspora #CaribbeanStudiesAssociation #AssociationofBlackSociologists #vocalist #voice #polyphonies #polyrhthmics #psychology #africandiaspora #afro #africa #musiccategory #anthropology #ergonomy #musicstyle #brain #musicgenre #history #culture #cameroon #guadeloupe #voice #gwoka #bele #martinique #montreal #canada #colombia #Comparative Literature #voice #blackdiaspora Host: Gino Sitson, PhD Contact: [email protected] www.polyvocal.com