International Symposium on Popular Music Studies: African Musics of the Portuguese- and French-speaking Worlds.

My dear colleague Fernando Arenas is the organizer of our department's International Symposium on Popular Music Studies: African Musics of the Portuguese- and French-speaking Worlds. The event kicked off last night with a screening at the Walker Art Center of Fados, a film by Carlos Saura, in collaboration with the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Film Festival (MSPIFF). You can hear some fado music here. The relation between the colonial powers and their former colonies, the voyages and exchanges of people, rhythms and their musical practices is a passion I share by many of my friends and colleagues, so it's great to have the opportunity to hear them share their work in this area.

Today's program includes talks on music in African cinema, Congolese Rumba in all its forms, the music of Cape Verde and especially the "divas" such as Cesaria Evoria, who sing in Kriolu, and Kriolu rap, not well-known at all in the U.S., and presentations on Mozambican and Angolan music in the struggles and politics of those countries. The keynote by world-renowned ethnomusicologist Gerhard Kubik brings us us a glimpse of his fifty years of engagement with the musics of Africa and the African Diaspora.

Tonight, the Cedar Cultural Center is hosting the Cape Verdian singer Carmen Souza, and Monday Gerhard Kubik will give a talk about his experiences as a jazz musician and scholar of music in South Africa: "Transformations and Reinterpretations of American Jazz: An Inside account of Jazz Performances in Southern Africa, 1960s to Now".

Fernando's talk about the Cape Verdean singers gave us a historical and cultural context for understanding the burst on to the world scene of singers such as Césaria Evora, Lura, Mayra Andrade, and Carmen Souza . I can't wait to hear Carmen Souza at the Cedar tonight!