Dr. Robert Beahrs, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pittsburgh "Nomadic perspectives on multivocality in the Altai Mountains"

January 19, 2017 - 3:30pm to 4:30pm

brought to you by the Center for Russian and East European Studies, and the University Center for International Studies at the University of Pittsburgh...

Robert O. Beahrs

Ethnomusicologist, sound artist, flimmaker, and Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pittsburgh

Nomadic perspectives on multivocality in the Altai Mountains

Thursday, January 19th, 3:30pm, 4217 WWPH

Over the past forty years, nomadic vocal practices from Inner Asia known as “throat-singing” or “overtone singing” have been commonly misunderstood. Drawing on twelve years of fieldwork in Tuva and Altai, this presentation explores how localized cosmologies and indigenous philosophies of voice and music suggest new ways of conceiving of xöömei beyond ethnic identity and vocal technique. This project joins a number of recent anthropological studies of Central Eurasia that reexamine how indigenous peoples were inscribed into the ethnographic archive and offers new ways of conceiving of the poetics and politics of life in less human-centered ecologies. 

*** more information about Dr. Beahrs is available here

 

Location and Address

4217 WWPH