Enjoy a spirited discussion from Matt Marble of the American Museum of Paramusicology, discussing animism and spirit work in the history of American music.
For centuries American musicians have found creative agency and ethical empowerment through animist listening. Spirit invocations, imaginal soundscapes, and cosmic forces pervade the music of the free world—and most of all when that freedom is threatened. Artist and director of the American Museum of Paramusicology, Matt Marble leads this single-lecture class exploring animism as a technology of empathic listening and its indispensable role in the creative process and the American dream.
Drawing from archival research and comparative metaphysics, we will look at how American musicians have found creative agency, ethical orientation, and progressive praxis through animist listening across the centuries. We’ll examine and listen to various animist music cultures, from Native American dream songs and Shaker gift songs to 19th-century séance music, and 20th-century musical luminaries like Merceditas Valdes, Sun Ra, and Pauline Oliveros, noting how these animist musics navigated and challenged colonial forces. Across musical styles and metaphysical traditions, students will leave with a new framework for listening as an ethical and empowering force in American music history—and in creative practice, ritual work, and collective freedom today.
Matt Marble (b. Meridian, Mississippi, 1979) is an artist, media producer, and the director of the American Museum of Paramusicology (“brilliant and humbling,” The Paris Review). He is the author of Buddhist Bubblegum: Esotericism in the Creative Process of Arthur Russell hailed by the New York Times as “groundbreaking work.” His creative practice and archival research explore the intersections of music and metaphysics in American history. He is the creator of the podcasts Secret Sound and The Hidden Present, the editor of the AMP Journal, and the curator of the archival exhibition I Hear Strange Music at NYU. Featured by Warp Records, Mississippi Records, Dublab Radio, and the Philosophical Research Society, his work has been presented internationally and supported by a research fellowship at Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music. He holds a PhD from Princeton University, a B.A. in Speech & Hearing Science from Portland State University, and a black rattlesnake from his dreams.
