Author Archives: ajkluth

Read a transcript of this presentation HERE View a PDF of the presentation slideshow HERE Please join the CWRU Department of Music this Friday, September 9th at 4:00 PM EST in the Harkness Chapel classroom for our first installment in this semester’s Colloquium Series. Our very own AJ Kluth will be presenting a talk entitledContinue reading “CWRU Colloquium: “What is this Revenant Called Jazz?””

I’m stoked to talk with Kyle Kidd about life, art, and everything next week. Come through at 4pm, April 14 if you’re in Cleveland! This talk is part of the Cleveland Humanities Festival and is generously funded by the Center for Popular Music Studies at CWRU.

As the academic semester winds down I’m choosing to feel good about the work I get to do as a scholar in critical music studies. In these last few years my teaching and mentorship opportunities have become increasingly important to me as modes of praxis; being part of a community that’s responding to the receivedContinue reading “Let’s keep going.”

Abstract: This essay takes seriously the assertion that our intentional practices of stillness change us – often for the better. Developing the idea of stillness-as-listening, various theoretical perspectives from the humanities are offered to support the idea that an intentional cultivation of a listening practice might productively augment a subject’s horizons of understanding. Such aContinue reading “On the Efficacy of Stillness-as-Listening: Perspectives from the Humanities”

Hey – do you love clipping.? Yeah, me too. They’re…amazing. So, I’m excited that something I wrote about their 2016 record, Splendor & Misery has recently been published. Here’s an abstract: ABSTRACT: Upon first listen, clipping.’s record Splendor & Misery (2016) is a strange document: an Afrofuturist record that is as much Euro-American avant-garde as it is hip hop.Continue reading “New clipping. essay published (!)”

Yet another opportunity for a public-access style conference video! I was grateful to share this talk as part of a panel called “Music, ‘Art’ and the White Racial Frame: Aesthetics and Critical Race Theory,” organized by the Royal Music Association’s Music and Philosophy Study Group. My talk, entitled “Decolonizing Ontological and Epistemological Assumptions of InstitutionalContinue reading “RMA – Music & Phil Study Group: A Conference Paper”

I’m slated to speak on Wednesday, October 13 as part of the Royal Music Association’s Music and Philosophy Study Group panel: “Music, Art, & the White Racial Frame: Aesthetics and Critical Race Theory.” This conference was scheduled to take place a few months back at King’s College in London but was rescheduled in a ZoomContinue reading “Conference Alert: RMA, Music and Philosophy Study Group”

The “Decolonizing Music Study” seminar I’m presently leading at CWRU has been fantastic in fomenting ideas in our small class setting. So good, in fact, that I want to invite anyone in the Cleveland area regardless of institutional affiliation to get in on this conversation, either addressing course content or branching out to related topics. AndContinue reading “Social Justice/Decolonizing Music Discussion Group”

Informed by recent demands of social justice movements and shifts in popular culture, some academic departments are doubling down on their work addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion. This can manifest as the diversification of a department through changes in hiring practices, “decolonizing” one’s syllabus, celebrating Pride month, and hanging conspicuous BLM posters around campus. WhileContinue reading “Teaching a New Course: Social Justice & Decolonization in Music Study”

(a conference paper) Continuing my spate of public-access-style conference papers, here’s my recent one for this year’s online conference for the International Association for the Study of Popular Music-US (IASPM-US), held in May 2021. I’m interested more and more in how our embodied communal archive of musical practices (memory, affect, imagination) is connected to theContinue reading “JAZZ IS (un)DEAD”