Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • Videos
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Library
    • Research
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • Videos
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Library
    • Research
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Arts & Culture

Outlaw Culture Music: Williams Makes Faculty Debut with Concert

Monday, November 16, 2015, By Amy Manley
Share
College of Arts and Sciences

James Gordon Williams, a creative musician and critical musicologist in the College of Arts and Sciences, will present a special concert titled “Outlaw Culture Music.”

Inspired by a series of essays by social activist Gloria Jean Watkins (whose nom de plume is bell hooks), the concert will take place on  Thursday, Nov. 19, at 6:30 p.m. in the Community Folk Art Center’s Black Box Theater (‪805 E. Genesee St.). The event is free and open to the public, and coincides with CFAC’s fall exhibition, “Resistance,” featuring works by Najee Dorsey. For more information about both events, visit CFAC at ‪http://communityfolkartcenter.org.

James Gordon Williams

James Gordon Williams

A pianist, composer and assistant professor of African American studies, Williams will be joined by New York guitarist Marvin J. Sewell; bassist and Syracuse native Ian Stewart; and drummer Joshua Dekaney, also an instructor in the College of Visual and Performing Arts’ Setnor School of Music.

The concert is co-sponsored by the Department of African American Studies, the Humanities Center and the Department of Art and Music Histories, all in Arts and Sciences.

“Outlaw Culture Music” is inspired by hooks’ “Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations” (Routledge, 2006). The book’s mix of essays and personal dialogues sheds new light on racism at the intersection of sexism and popular media.

Williams says his program of original music is in conversation with hooks’ work and seeks to examine the “critical thinking process behind deconstructing representations of oppression, liberation and resistance.”

“An ‘outlaw’ usually refers to someone who has broken the law,” he says. “In this context, it alludes to someone whose life has not been valued the same way within the law. Historically, certain communities have been considered outside the concern of the law.”

Williams adds that Dorsey’s exhibition, which uses mixed media to explore the legacy of African American resistance and the oppression that has spawned it, provides the ideal backdrop for the concert.

“As an artist and scholar, I am hoping that the audience will gain a deeper understanding of how critical thought can be directly related to composition and improvised musical texts,” Williams says. “I believe people can be thrilled by musical sounds, and encouraged to think critically about what that sound represents.”

Williams joined the faculty in 2014. His research interests include practices of resistance in Afro-diasporic improvisation and composition, performance of racial identity through music technology, and the epistemologies of African American music.

A native of Los Angeles, Williams has worked with some of the biggest names in modern jazz, including drummers Charli Persip and Peter Erskine, saxophonists Greg Tardy and Greg Osby, and bassist Mark Dresser. His performances have taken him all over the world, including France, Italy, Switzerland and Malta.

“Music is always more fun and meaningful when it’s rooted in powerful ideas that lift people up, instead of tearing them down,” he says. “Performing at CFAC is to perform in a very special place with allies who have been doing this kind of critical work in various formations for decades. I am proud to be a part of its history.”

Attendees are encouraged to share their voice by using #OutlawCultureMusic on Twitter, during and after the concert.

  • Author

Amy Manley

  • Recent
  • Pre-Registration Open for On-Campus Vaccine Clinic
    Friday, April 16, 2021, By News Staff
  • Commencement 2021 Update
    Friday, April 16, 2021, By News Staff
  • Activities for the Weekend of April 15-19 | Submit Proof of Vaccination
    Thursday, April 15, 2021, By News Staff
  • ‘Biden is Considering Overhauling the Supreme Court. That’s Happened During Every Crisis in US Democracy’
    Thursday, April 15, 2021, By Lily Datz
  • ‘It Was Never All or Nothing in Afghanistan’
    Thursday, April 15, 2021, By News Staff

More In Arts & Culture

Architecture Student Named to Future100 List in Metropolis Magazine

Vedyun Mishra G’21, a graduate student in the School of Architecture, has been selected for Metropolis Magazine’s Future100, an elite group of architecture and interior architecture students from the U.S. and Canada. The inaugural award recognizes the top 100 graduating…

LLL Provides Students a Virtual Taste of Italian Food and Culture

When Syracuse University students finish up the fall semester and travel home for Winterlude, they may be left missing the sense of community and intellectual nourishment they get from classes and their friends. To provide students with a unique learning…

Department of Drama Releases Digital Senior Showcase

The Department of Drama in the College of Visual and Performing Arts introduced its acting and musical theater Class of 2021 today, April 12, via a new website: SyracuseShowcase.com. The website offers a digital version of the department’s annual Lewis…

Stephen Kuusisto Receives 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry

The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation has announced that Stephen Kuusisto, University Professor in the School of Education and director of interdisciplinary programs and outreach at the Burton Blatt Institute in the College of Law, has been awarded a 2021 Guggenheim…

Light Work Presents Meryl Meisler: ‘Best of Times, Worst of Times’

Light Work presents Meryl Meisler: “Best of Times, Worst of Times,” an exhibition of her photography of her life in and around New York City in the 1970s and 1980s.  Meisler’s exhibition will be on view in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • @SUCampus
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2021 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.