Ultrasonic Tastemakers: Towards a Critical Gastromusicology

The music department is delighted to welcome Alisha Lola Jones. Alisha Jones will be presenting her talk on: Ultrasonic Tastemakers: Towards a Critical Gastromusicology.

Across African American music genres, artists have linked their musical and gustatory prowess to transport their fanbase on a multi-sensory journey, particularly in the resonances found in the overlapping development of "soul food" and "soul music" cultures. Probing that constellation of soulful, musical, sensual, and culinary perception, the manual Ultrasonic Tastemakers: Towards a Critical Gastromusicology is a ground-breaking critical gastromusicological investigation into the interconnectedness of African American embodiment, oral transmission, cultural production, wealth extraction, and consumption in the global marketplace as emblematic of what Jones coins as gastromusicophysics or multisensory “taste.”

Prompted by the high demand and distribution of African American music and foodways as major U.S. industries and exports, this book project takes seriously accounts of the pain and pleasure in gastromusicological flows throughout U.S. history, from work songs sung while share cropping to performing “Strange Fruit” in jazz clubs during the Jim Crow era. While previous gastromusicological research has focused on composers’ culinary lives (Braus 2007) and music researchers’ foodways encounters and recipes (Williams 2006), there has not been an in-depth, multisensory exploration of African American tastemakers’ musico-gustatory role in satiating consumers’ voracious appetites for African-derived culture on the world’s stage.

In this talk, Jones sets the foundation for a critical gastromusicology by establishing tastemakers of African ancestry’s crucial contributions at the intersection of musicogustatory and sonogustatory production. Touring African American culture-bearers have always been marked by their forced mobility or monetized portability.

Online participation via Teams is open to King's members. Please be in touch with Gavin Williams (gavin.williams@kcl.ac.uk) for the Teams link or with any other queries.

All talks take place in the Saint Davids Room (above the Great Hall, and opposite the chapel, in the King’s Building, Strand) and everyone is welcome!