Making Sense of a Changing World: : Poetry and Music in Contexts of Political Instability

Professor Kelly Askew, a renown anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker, explores how music and poetry can offer opportunities for ordinary people to navigate, make sense, and negotiate moments of political transitions. This talk includes video-clips, poems, and insights from her anthropological research in East Africa, and most notably in the island of Zanzibar – a place where people have used rap music, Taarab, and vernacular poetry to navigate everyday challenges and negotiate moments of political upheavals. Besides Zanzibar and East Africa, this talk reflects more broadly on how artistic performances today can serve as an orienting device in a collective moment marked by rapid mutations and a more uncertain future.

Speakers

• Kelly Askew, Director of the African Studies Center, Professor of Anthropology and Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan

Hosted by

• NYU Abu Dhabi Institute