On June 12 and 13, 2026, the University of Chicago will host the Caribbean Intensities in Music and Sound Symposium. This two-day symposium and public humanities gathering brings together scholars, artists, and community-based cultural workers from across the Caribbean and the United States to explore “intensity” as both a sonic descriptor and an analytic for understanding how force is distributed, condensed, experienced, and felt through regional music and sound.
Caribbean music is so often described through its extremes: the loudness of champeta, the speed of wylers, the “likkle but tallawah” diminutive of regional artists, the gregarious exuberance of fête culture, the outlandish aesthetics of dancehall and shotta, the explicitness of bouyon, the heat of perreo, or the fervor of devotional musics. These descriptions circle experiences with intensity in Caribbean sonic practices that we also hear and feel in regional terms like "groove," "tumbao," "drive," "cadencia," "dembow," "tempo," and "fuerza." Rather than treating these popular sayings and vocabulary as clichés of excess, we wonder how we might think critically with them.
The program features traditional research presentations and a live performance by the Caribbean band Rocket & Gizzae. Guests will also visit the Museum of Contemporary Art to view the Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón exhibition as the keynote event. This exhibition explores and expands the visual, political, and spiritual histories of dancehall and reggaetón through contemporary art—two dynamic genres that have transcended their grassroots origins to shape global culture. Dancing the Revolution positions music and dance as a revolutionary practice for collective liberation rooted in the struggle against colonial oppression.
View the full conference schedule below, and click here to learn more and register (free entry with registration, please RSVP by June 8).
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Friday, June 12
Franke Institute for the Humanities
1100 E 57th St, Chicago, IL 60637
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8:30–9:00 am - Coffee, Tea, and Welcome
9:00–10:30 am - Sonic Intensity Beyond the Human
Charissa Granger / Vicky Mogollón Montagne / Ally Dellgren
Striking Intensity Beyond Excess: Iron, Rhythmic attunement, and the (Re)making of the Human in Caribbean Music
Transmitting Fuerza: On Music’s Spiritual Affordances in Venezuelan Espiritismo Marialioncero
Lady Saw as Mystic: Erotic Intensity and Sonic Devotion
10:30–12:00 pm - Sonic Thresholds
Angelina Tallaj / Mike Levine / Jessica C. Hajek
Carnivalesque Intensities: Race, Sound, and the Reconfiguration of Dominican Merengue
‘¡Dan asco!’: Disgust, Desire, and Sonic Intensity in Cuban Reparto
Sonified Mobilities: Alibabá Dance and Music in Bodies, Time, and Space
12:00–1:00 pm - Lunch
1:00–2:30 pm - Archive, Memory, Institution
Willa Liburd / Courtney Joseph / Ruthie Meadows
Heritage Institutions, Sonic Spaces, and Fragmented Identities
Archiving Haitian Intensities: Oral Histories, Silence, and the Limits of the Archive
Archival Intensities in Gender and Jazz: The University of Miami Libraries’ Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC)
2:30–4:00 pm - Caribbean Sound/ European Forms
Rebecca Dirksen / Lauren Eldridge Stewart / David Aarons
Of Monsters and the Monstrous: Carmen Brouard’s Symphonic Poem Baron la Croix
Caribbean in the Concert Hall
Noises (and Silences) in the Blood: Acoustemology, Coloniality, and the Body in/of the Anglican Church in Jamaica
4:00–5:00 pm - Break
5:00–6:45 pm - Presenters’ Welcome Dinner (private event)
7:00–9:00 pm - Concert: Caribbean Rhythms with Rocket & Gizzae
Logan Center for the Arts | Café Logan
915 E 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
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Saturday, June 13
Franke Institute for the Humanities
1100 E 57th St, Chicago, IL 60637
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9:00–9:30 am - Coffee, Tea, and Pastries
9:30–11:00 am - Virtual Caribbean: Music, Community, and the Internet
Jessica Swanston Baker / Rachel Chery / Anjelica Fabro
The Golden Years Remixed: YouTube, Musical Nostalgia, and Haiti Inter
The Echoes and Tides of a Virtual Lime: Relation and Tidalectics During De Stan Home Party and Lil Rick
11:00 am–12:00 pm - Soca, Kaiso, and Political Life in Trinidad
Ryan Jobson / Nicha Selvon-Ramkissoon
Mus Eat Ah Food: A Kaiso Genealogy of the Petro-state Masquerade
Emotive And Familial Intensities In Soca Music
12:00–1:00 pm - Lunch
1:00–1:30 pm - Closing Remarks
2:00–5:00pm - Keynote Event: Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón Exhibition
Museum of Contemporary Art*
220 E Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
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*Guest transportation is provided.
Departure: 2:00pm at The Study Hotel.
Exhibition at 2:30pm.
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Support for the symposium is provided by UChicago Global, the Franke Institute for the Humanities, Caribbean Studies, and the Department of Music. Additional support for the concert is provided by the Logan Center's Chill Endowment and friends of the Logan Center.
The symposium is co-organized by Jessica Swanston Baker (Associate Professor of Music, UChicago), Vicky Mogollón Montagne (Postdoctoral Fellow in Music, UChicago), and Ayanna Williams (Department of Music Coordinator, UChicago).
For more information, visit https://caribbean.event.uchicago.edu.