Past Events

American Experience presents a virtual PAST FORWARD conversation exploring how music is commodified and what is lost in the process. This conversation is inspired by our new film The War on Disco, premiering MON, OCT 30 @ 9/8c on PBS, and then available to stream on our website and on the PBS app.

Panelists will discuss what is meant by "mainstream" culture, how an art form can move from its original context to a space of "broader" appeal, and the changes that the art form undergoes in this process. They will also explore the emotional and expressive importance of music to different cultures and individuals, and the sense of identity listeners invest in various styles and genres of music. The panel will examine whether music and art forms like it ultimately lose their authenticity and resonance when they enter into the mainstream.

Panelists:

Jefferson Cowie is the James G. Stahlman Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. Cowie's work in social and political history focuses on how class, race, and labor shape American politics and culture. His latest book, Freedom's Dominion, won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2023. In addition to his scholarship, Cowie’s essays and opinion pieces have also appeared in the New York Times, TIME magazine, NPR Music, Foreign Affairs, Chronicle of Higher Ed, American Prospect, Politico, Democracy, The New Republic, Inside Higher Ed, Dissent, and other popular outlets. The recipient of several fellowships, he has also appeared in a variety of media outlets including CNN’s The Seventies, C‐Span’s Booknotes, NPR’s Weekend Edition, as well as documentaries, podcasts, and radio broadcasts.

Ayana Contreras is a cultural historian, memory worker, radio DJ and archivist. An avid collector with over 8000 vintage vinyl records, she hosts the Reclaimed Soul program on WBEZ and Vocalo Radio in Chicago. She is also a columnist for DownBeat magazine, and her writings have been published in The New York Times, Chicago Review, Oxford American and Bandcamp Daily among other publications. Her book on Post-Civil Rights Era cultural history, titled Energy Never Dies: Afro-Optimism and Creativity in Chicago, was published December 2021 through University of Illinois Press.

The conversation will be moderated by Timothy D. Taylor. Taylor is a professor in the Departments of Ethnomusicology, Anthropology, and Musicology at UCLA. He is the author of several articles and chapters, and many books, most recently, Working Musicians: Labor and Creativity in Film and Television Production (Duke University Press, 2023), an ethnographic study of film and television musicians in Los Angeles.

The event will be streamed live on our YouTube and Facebook pages.

Wear your favorite Pinkalicious-inspired costume to the BPL and enjoy watching new episodes of Pinkalicious & Peterrific! Coloring and treats will be available to all.

Adrian Walker of The Boston Globe moderates a discussion with Zebulon V. Miletsky, PhD., associate professor of Africana Studies, Stonybrook University and the author of, A History of Boston’s Long Black Freedom Struggle, Alisa R. Drayton, Executive Director, Yawkey Club of Roxbury, and Marilyn Flowers-Marion, chairperson, Retired Teachers Chapter of the Boston Teachers Union, on their lived experiences of court-ordered busing in Boston during the 1970s. The panel also explores the long-term impacts of busing on the city of Boston, including the current state of Boston’s public schools and racial equity in a myriad of arenas. Looking to the future, the panel considers what a more equitable Boston Public School System might look like.

We are here every Thursday bringing you local musicians to make noise at the library!

Mixing Jazz and Latin in eclectic arrangements of old and new, famous and obscure, hot and cool, Triology +1 plays a wide variety of material with international influences. The members originate from four different continents and each brings their own unique experience to the music. Ranging from straight ahead swing to explorations of Latin rhythms and odd time signatures on Jazz tunes, standards, original compositions, folk melodies, and the occasional pop hit, Triology +1 puts its unique imprint on the music.

Reed Cournoyer- Piano/ vocals
Ririka Tokushige- Reeds
Tal Shalom -Kobi- Bass and Accordion
Renato Malavasi- Drums

Join us for an evening of music, wine, and food. Registration is encouraged for this free event.

GBH Music and JazzBoston present JazzNOW: Shaping the Sound of Jazz, featuring the innovative trio "Hum” led by pianist/keyboardist Nina Ott, along with drummer Chris Lopes, and John McKenna on sax and electronic sculpture percussion. Three improvisers collectively explore music in traditional and unconventional ways, live at GBH Fraser Performance Studio in Brighton.

Support GBH Music and get a front row seat to 4 immersive in-person music productions at our studios in Brighton. Guests who contribute $250 will receive a pair of tickets to 4 upcoming music events between October 2023 and June 2024.

All events take place in the acoustically acclaimed GBH Fraser Performance Studio in Brighton.

These 4 events from the cross-genre GBH Music Presents concerts listed below:

•  October 25, 2023 (7:15-9pm), GBH Music & JazzBoston Present JazzNOW: Shaping the Sound of Jazz, includes a pre-performance wine and cheese reception
  
•  Nov. 13, 2023, (7:30-9:30pm), GBH Music presents violinist Eldbjørg Hemsing, includes post-performance dessert reception
  
•  February 8, 2024, (7:15-9pm), GBH Music and JazzBoston Presents event, includes a pre-performance wine and cheese reception
  
•  May 16, 2024, (7:15-9pm), GBH Music Presents Classical Night event, includes a pre-performance wine and cheese reception

Your pair of tickets for these 4 GBH Music Presents events will include:

•  Pre-performance wine and cheese or post-performance dessert reception including 1 complementary beverage per person (wine/beer/soft drinks will be served)
•  Priority seating for the performance. Reserved seats in the first 3 rows in GBH Fraser Performance Studio for the hour-long live musical performance with the featured classical or jazz ensemble

Kate Brown is the Thomas M. Siebel Distinguished Professor in the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the author of several prize-winning histories, including Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford 2013). Her latest book Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future (Norton 2019), translated into six languages, won the Marshall Shulman and Reginald Zelnik Prizes for the best book in East European History, plus the Silver Medal for Laura Shannon Book Prize. Manual for Survival was also a finalist for the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pushkin House Award and the Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage.

This talk is part of the Boston College Lowell Humanities Series and is cosponsored by the Boston College History Department and The Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society.

Join Paul Revere House for the third lecture of the Paul Revere House's 2023 Lowell Lecture Series. This 3-part series From Puritans to Catholics: Religion in Boston’s North End examines how shifts in religious traditions impacted cultural expression, demographics, political affiliations and economic status in the North End.

The key speaker is Stephen Puleo, Author and Historian. When thousands of immigrants from Southern Italy flocked to the North End in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, their Catholic religious practices shocked the Irish diocesan hierarchy.

Stephen Puleo will discuss what this reveals about why this group left Italy, how they viewed religion, and how their presence shaped the North End. Presented in partnership with GBH, the Suffolk University History Department, Old North Illuminated, and the North End Historical Society, with funding from the Lowell Institute. For more information, please contact staff@paulreverehouse.org or visit paulreverehouse.org

The air contains an enormous amount of electricity. Clouds are full of it. But how to actually capture it for a continuous energy resource? Dr. Jun Yao and his colleagues at UMass-Amherst have created a small-scale cloud they call the “generic Air-gen effect” that produces a reliable stream of electricity that can be harvested for general use. In this interview, Dr. Yao describes how the Air-gen innovation was developed, how the electricity is harvested from the air via a special material made of protein nanowires, and when the device can be scaled up for general use.

Each of the last presidential elections has presented its own unique challenges, from historically unpopular candidates to voting during a global pandemic. 2024 is shaping up to be no different. Join David Paleologos, Director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center and one of the United States’ most respected and trustworthy pollsters, to discuss our next unprecedented presidential election. Get the inside scoop on the swing states, critical voting blocs, and crucial issues that could make or break the 2024 elections. The afternoon's moderator is Latoyia Edwards, Emmy award-winning anchor on NBC10 Boston and NECN.