Temporal Dichotomies & Speculative Mythologies

31st Jan 2023 31st Jan 2023 13:00 15:00

Yewande Adeniran

13:00

NZIRIA

14:00

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5 / 10 € day pass

  • Nabihah Iqbal

    UK

    The musician, producer, DJ and broadcaster from London made waves in 2017 with her debut album, Weighing of the Heart, on Ninja Tune, and is currently an artist-in-residence at London’s Somerset House, where she is writing and recording her second album.

     

  • ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U

    JP

    Versatility does not even come close to describing how the humble Japanese DJ is considered to be one of the best in the world by many of his peers.

  • Anna Kravets

    UA

    The Ukrainian researcher, radio journalist, sound artist, and documentary podcast producer is one of this year’s Radio Lab winners.

    • Live stream

    In this session, two artists and researchers – Yewande Adeniran (aka Ifeoluwa) and SHAPE+-supported NZIRIA – will present their explorations of different temporalities, and how artistic means of the digital can be used to combine techno-futuristic ideas with elements of folklore rooted deep in the past, ancient spiritual traditions, and mythological ideas. While Adeniran will explore the role of the drum in the spiritual traditions of the Yoruba in Nigeria as a medium of communication, which experiences subversive re-articulations in the colonial era, but also in the techno music of the present, NZIRIA will delve into their research into Neapolitan culture, interrogating and reinterpreting its origins and some of the topoi of Neapolitan culture through a queer lens.

    Two artists and researchers – Yewande Adeniran (aka Ifeoluwa) and NZIRIA – will present their explorations of different temporalities, and how artistic means of the digital can be used to combine techno-futuristic ideas with elements of folklore rooted deep in the past, ancient spiritual traditions, and mythological ideas. While Adeniran will explore the role of the drum in the spiritual traditions of the Yoruba in Nigeria as a medium of communication, which experiences subversive re-articulations in the colonial era, but also in the techno music of the present, NZIRIA will delve into their research into Neapolitan culture, interrogating and reinterpreting its origins and some of the topoi of Neapolitan culture through a queer lens.

    Photo: Marialba Russo

    Drum Signalling as Linguistic Liberation from Lagos To Detroit

    Talk by Yewande Adeniran, moderated by Aida Baghernejad

    Following the afrofuturist tradition, Yewande Adeniran aka Ifeoluwa traces the lineage of the talking drum, morphing from spiritual traditions in Nigeria used by the Yoruba to the drum machine in Detroit, as techno, grime, and beyond. Banned during The Transatlantic Slave Trade period due to fears of uprising, and again to enforce submission into the English language during the British Colonial era, drum signalling is a key linguistic tool that preserved a language that cannot be colonised. A form of History, culture, and a liberation tool, drum signalling as a sonic medium of communication encapsulates this particular diasporic Ebonics existence as a subversive rearticulation of polyrhythms, improvisation, and collectiveness.

    Hard Neomelodic: A New Gender Identity Shaped through Sonic Mutations

    Talk by Nziria, moderated by Aida Baghernejad

    The Neomelodic genre was born in Naples at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, coinciding with the decline of classic Neapolitan song and the return of the Neapolitan sceneggiata. It was brought back into vogue by singers such as Mario Merola or Nino D'Angelo. Neomelodic is characterised by melancholic and exasperated singing, and deals with certain themes of yearning and passionate love, betrayal, distance, difficult life in working-class neighbourhoods, family, drugs, and criminal life.

    Neomelodic song is closely linked to certain ritual events in family and neighbourhood life: the Neomelodic singer, almost always male, performs at weddings, baptisms, confirmations and illegal parties. The LGBTQI+ community has always remained fairly marginal in Neomelodic narratives, although it has included a few trans singers. Starting from my experience as a non-binary person who sings Neomelodic while firmly rejecting cisgender and heteronormative roles, and hybridising the genre with gabber influences, the talk aims to provide an overview of Neomelodic song, using it as a lens through which to look at the eclectic and audacious Neapolitan cultural landscape, populated by oneiric symbols and liminal figures, messengers of an archaic and contradictory world that nonetheless does not exhaust itself in narratives of a distant and glossy past, but rather is a living element, made of flesh, earth, magic and luck. We will talk about gender identity in Neapolitan music and culture; about the Femminielli and their rituals, such as the Figliata or the Sposalizio masculino; and about the Tarantella and the Tammurriata, two genres in many ways akin to Hardcore and the rave scene – with the aim of tracing a symbolic, aesthetic, and synaesthetic map within which to read some of the key themes of my research into the variegated world that rises on the slopes of Vesuvius.

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    NZIRIA is supported by SHAPE+ which is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.