Precarity and Community

FUMI OKIJI is a researcher who looks to Black expression for alternative ways to understand the inadequacies of modern and contemporary life. Okiji explores how Black and Africana music, sound cultures, and expression, more broadly, provide the basis of a critical theory. Okiji’s approach is thoroughly interdisciplinary, drawing from Black radical thought and expression, critical theory, sound studies, and musicology. She is the author of Jazz as Critique: Adorno and Black Expression Revisited (Stanford University Press, 2018) and is currently working on a second book project, tentatively entitled Billie’s Bent Elbow: The Standard as Revolutionary Intoxication.

KWAMI T. COLEMAN is an assistant professor of music at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. His research is focused on improvised and experimental music, aesthetics, and identity in postwar American music history. His forthcoming book is titled Change: Modern Jazz and the “New Thing.” Coleman is a pianist, composer, and electronic musician; his first recording as an ensemble leader, Local Music, was released in 2017.