Join us on Thursday, March 30, at 6:00 p.m., at the Members' Room of The New York Society Library as Guthrie P. Ramsey talks about his book Who Hears Here? On Black Music, Pasts & Present. He will be in conversation with Alicia Hall Moran.

Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. is an award-winning musicologist, music historian, composer, and pianist whose prescient theoretical and critical interventions have bridged Black cultural studies and musicology. Representing twenty-five years of commentary and scholarship, these essays document Ramsey’s search to understand America's Black musical past and present and to find his own voice as an African American writer in the field of musicology. This far-reaching collection embraces historiography, ethnography, cultural criticism, musical analysis, and autobiography, traversing the landscape of Black musical expression from sacred music to art music, and jazz to hip-hop. Taken together, these essays and the provocative introduction that precedes them are testament to the legacy work that has come to define a field, as well as a rousing call to readers to continue to ask the hard questions and write the hard truths.

Dr. Ramsey will include live musical selections in this special event.

Jason Moran, the Kennedy Center's Artistic Director for Jazz, says, "Guthrie Ramsey has culled his ultimate mixtape of essays in Who Hears Here? His prismatic essays are essential reading for anyone wanting to understand why they bob their head or move their feet while simultaneously asking the question: Why does this feel so damn good? Dr. Ramsey is uniquely positioned as the brilliant musician and scholar who can translate sound for us. Our music is lucky to have his ear and mind locate the metaphors that only show their face in a sound wave. I hear!"

A Guggenheim Fellow and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. is a prize-winning music historian, pianist, composer. He is Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of Pennsylvania.

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