My current research interests include the sonic and affective dimensions of everyday violence, hemispheric histories of religion (Spiritism), and popular digital music scenes in Caracas (raptor house, música urbana, and electro-tambor). I engage enthusiastically with public humanities methods and literature to communicate with diverse publics, explore narrative styles outside of conventional academic writing, and interrogate issues surrounding ethics, access and authority in the making of scholarship. As an educator, writer, and performer, I am involved in collaborative partnerships with the diasporic Venezuelan community to build and support the growing tambor music network in the U.S. In the past, I also participated in music-related projects at the Smithsonian Institution (National Museum of American History and Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage), the Venezuelan National Museum of Science, and the UT-Austin Briscoe Center for American Studies.
My book project discusses how the sensory experience of fuerza, a key religious principle in Espiritismo Marialioncero (Venezuelan spiritism), allows practitioners to reappraise notions of endurance and (in)humanity while facing systematic demonization and persecution. I advance that mobilizing fuerza for spirit possession has become a restorative practice whereby more-than-human entities from centuries past and living practitioners seek redress and healing from the legacies of loss, pain and social abandonment that permeate Venezuela’s current crisis. Musically speaking, this research focuses primarily on the religious reworkings of salsa and Afro-Venezuelan tambor in Espiritismo Marialioncero contexts.
I hold a PhD in ethnomusicology from The University of Texas at Austin, a MMus in Adavanced Musical Studies from Royal Holloway – University of London, and a BA in Music from the University of Denver. Prior to my appointment at Chicago, I was the Charles H. Turner postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music. My work has been supported by fellowships from the Society for Ethnomusicology, the Society for American Music, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino, the Venezuelan National Research Institute, and the Tinker Foundation.
(Photo credit: Nicolás Medina)