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CATEGORIES:Lecture,Music
DESCRIPTION:Abstract: From 1904 through the 1930s\, U.S. corporate and mili
 tary entities effectively monopolized wireless communications/radio through
 out the Caribbean and Latin America\, with the exception of Mexico. These s
 tations attempted to colonize what could be heard\, by whom\, and on what t
 erms. Building on a nineteenth-century infrastructure that I traced in earl
 ier work\, this paper reframes “rhythmic migrations” across Hispaniola and 
 Cuba as a counter-plantation history of sound under U.S. occupation and cor
 porate agriculture. In dialogue with Tao Leigh Goffe\, Alejandra Bronfman\,
  Sergio Ospina Romero\, and Ana María Ochoa Gautier\, I develop the concept
  of a “radio-plantation complex” to track how radio functioned as a territo
 rial technology that managed commodity extraction\, from sugar to songs. Al
 ongside its military and logistics applications\, radio and recorded sound 
 enabled an extractive aural pipeline that became a profitable distribution 
 system for commodified musical products as well as a key node of U.S. propa
 ganda. Yet these systems did not produce passive audiences or derivative fo
 rms. In Haiti\, Cuba\, and the Dominican Republic\, occupation-era and post
 -occupation musical ensembles creolized imported formats into local grammar
 s. In particular\, these artists’ engagement with “jazz” contested its proj
 ection as an imperial soundtrack and produced nuanced expressions of aesthe
 tic self-determination. I trace several case studies\, such as Cuban trumpe
 ter Julio Cueva and Haitian saxophonist (of partial Dominican parentage) Ne
 mours Jean-Baptiste\, to show how a regional mobilization of cultural labor
  transformed wireless communications and jazz-era aesthetics through mutual
 -aid benefits\, re-creolized genres\, and transnational\, anti-imperial mob
 ilizations over the airwaves. I argue that\, in their fight over the politi
 cal economy of pleasure\, these artists force us to expand and challenge th
 e aesthetic boundaries of jazz\, reclaiming its Afro-diasporic routes and c
 reating a kind of public sphere based in a decolonial and anti-fascist popu
 lar front. In contrast to a top-down reading of U.S. radio hegemony\, these
  artists suggest that the very attempts to render the Caribbean an economic
  periphery made it a crucible of technological and cultural modernity in th
 e mid-twentieth century.\n\nBenjamin Barson is a composer\, historian\, and
  musicologist. His book Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz
  Commons (Weslyean University Press\, 2024) thinks through jazz as an Afro-
 Atlantic art form deeply tied to the counter-plantation legacies of the Hai
 tian Revolution and their echoes in Radical Reconstruction. He received his
  PhD in Music from the University of Pittsburgh and recently completed a Me
 llon Postdoctoral Fellowship at Cornell University and a Fulbright Garcia-R
 obles postdoctoral fellowship at the Universidad Autónoma de Baja Californi
 a in Mexicali\, Mexico. Barson’s research rethinks migration\, agency\, and
  cultural resistance\, and has published on topics ranging from the musical
  cultures of Chinese indenture in the late nineteenth century United States
  South (The Cargo Rebellion\, PM Press\, 2023) to the legacy of Haitian mig
 rants in early Louisianan blues (in The Routledge Handbook to Jazz and Gend
 er\, 2022).\n\nBarson is the recipient of the 2018 Johnny Mandel Prize from
  the ASCAP Foundation for this distinguished work as a jazz saxophonist and
  composer. Barson\, disturbed by the incredible oppression wrought by white
  supremacy and the destruction of global ecology\, employs a musical practi
 ce that draws from the deep well of revolutionary musicians within the jazz
  tradition\, often composing through a collaborative process with activists
  and social movement leaders in the Global South. His work Mirror Butterfly
 : The Migrant Liberation Movement Suite (2018) was hailed as “Fully orchest
 rated and magnificently realized” (The Vermont Standard) as well as “a call
  to action” (I Care if You Listen).  \n\nBarson’s teaching encourages stude
 nts to consider musical aesthetics and their associated production practice
 s through a holistic\, interdisciplinary approach rooted in methodologies d
 eveloped by scholars in Africana studies\, musicology\, cultural studies\, 
 and Atlantic History from below.
DTEND:20260305T223000Z
DTSTAMP:20260416T105609Z
DTSTART:20260305T213000Z
GEO:42.450138;-76.483635
LOCATION:Lincoln Hall\, B21
SEQUENCE:0
SUMMARY:Music and Sound Studies Colloquium: Benjamin Barson\, "The Radio-Pl
 antation Complex: the Logistics of Empire and the Jazz Commons in the U.S.-
 Occupied Caribbean\, 1898–1959"
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_52004014312037
URL:https://events.cornell.edu/event/music-and-sound-studies-colloquium-ben
 jamin-barson-the-radio-plantation-complex-the-logistics-of-empire-and-the-j
 azz-commons-in-the-us-occupied-caribbean-18981959
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