Join us online for Alisha Lola Jones talk, "It's Just Like FIRE!" : Black Musical Masculinites and the Art of Enflaming Worship

Thursday, April 7, 2 p.m. (VIRTUAL only)

This VIRTUAL ONLY event is available free to Pitt students, faculty, and staff via ZOOM meeting and to the public via livestream on the Music at Pitt YouTube channel. 

Register to attend the ZOOM meeting (authentication required)
OR
View the livestream on the Music at Pitt YouTube channel

Prompted by common multi-sensory language of fire to describe one's spiritual activation by the Holy Spirit, this talk explores topics in Flaming?: The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance (2020). Dr. Alisha Lola Jones' new book examines the rituals and social interactions of African American men who use gospel music-making as a means of worshiping God and performing gendered identities. Prompted by the popular term "flaming" that is used to identify over-the-top or peculiar performance of identity, she argues that these men wield and interweave a variety of multivalent, aural-visual cues, including vocal style, gesture, attire, and homiletics, to position themselves along a spectrum of gender identities. Through a progression of transcongregational case studies, Flaming? observes the ways in which African American men traverse tightly knit social networks to negotiate their identities through and beyond theworship experience.

Dr. Alisha Lola Jones is an associate professor in the music department of the University of Cambridge. She is a board member of the Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM), a member of the strategic planning task force for the American Musicological Society (AMS), and a co-chair of the Music and Religion Section of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). Additionally, as a performer-scholar, she consults museums, conservatories, seminaries, and arts organizations on curriculum, live and virtual event programming, and content development. Dr. Jones’ book Flaming?: The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance (Oxford University Press) breaks ground by analyzing the role of gospel music-making in constructing and renegotiating gender identity among black men. Dr. Jones' book has been awarded the 2021 Ruth Stone (SEM), Music in American Culture (AMS), and Philip Brett (AMS) Prizes.  Her research interests extend to global pop music, musics of the African diaspora, music and food, the music industry and the marketplace, and anti-oppressive ways of listening to black women. A little-known fact is that Dr. Alisha Lola Jones and her sister Rev. Angela Marie Jones are co-owners of Paradise Media Group, a Black women-owned radio company based in Oxford and Henderson, NC. She and her husband Rev. Calvin Taylor Skinner are bicontinental as partners in ministry and love.

Each semester the Department of Music presents visiting scholars who are leaders in their fields. All Visiting Scholar Lectures are free to the public. For more information call 412-624-4125 or e-mail rnf11@pitt.edu.