The violent and sometimes near-bloody responses to the implementation of guidelines meant for stemming the spread of the coronavirus disease this past year has been cause for concern in many quarters of public health and public policy. Equally disturbing are the conspiracy theories that emerged soon after the WHO elevated to COVID-19 to a pandemic. Many have thus described our experience with the disease as unprecedented.

But, is it really? Drawing from more than a decade of study of musical responses to epidemics and plagues, this presentation demonstrates that whereas medical science still possesses the best means of understanding and documenting patterns of disease epidemics, including its morbidity, modes of transmission, and treatment, it does not account for cultural ways of responding to epidemics. I suggest that culture as human ways of being in the world is best predicted in the expressive forms including music in which people’s thought patterns and symbolisms which they often deploy in times of complex world events find expression and articulation. This presentation is an opportunity to further unpack a theory that I formulated in the course my research that when non-finite factors such as sociocultural, economic, and political conditions recur or persist under any environment of disease epidemics , human behaviors are bound to remain the same or at least similar regardless of space and time differentials. The question then is, why did we miss the clues that could have helped us anticipate some of sociocultural fallouts that have proven negatively consequential in the US and world responses to the COVID-19. Can music still serve as an archive of cultural knowledge that may prove useful in future epidemics?
 

Click here to register! 

The violent and sometimes near-bloody responses to the implementation of guidelines meant for stemming the spread of the coronavirus disease this past year has been cause for concern in many quarters of public health and public policy. Equally disturbing are the conspiracy theories that emerged soon after the WHO elevated to COVID-19 to a pandemic. Many have thus described our experience with the disease as unprecedented.

But, is it really? Drawing from more than a decade of study of musical responses to epidemics and plagues, this presentation demonstrates that whereas medical science still possesses the best means of understanding and documenting patterns of disease epidemics, including its morbidity, modes of transmission, and treatment, it does not account for cultural ways of responding to epidemics. I suggest that culture as human ways of being in the world is best predicted in the expressive forms including music in which people’s thought patterns and symbolisms which they often deploy in times of complex world events find expression and articulation. This presentation is an opportunity to further unpack a theory that I formulated in the course my research that when non-finite factors such as sociocultural, economic, and political conditions recur or persist under any environment of disease epidemics , human behaviors are bound to remain the same or at least similar regardless of space and time differentials. The question then is, why did we miss the clues that could have helped us anticipate some of sociocultural fallouts that have proven negatively consequential in the US and world responses to the COVID-19. Can music still serve as an archive of cultural knowledge that may prove useful in future epidemics?
 

Click here to register!