Alisha Lola Jones | Ultrasonic Tastemaker: A Critical Gastromusicology

Event details

Speaker: Dr Alisha Lola Jones (University of Cambridge)

Date: Thursday 28 March 2024

Time: 5.15 - 6.45pm.  

Venue: Alison House, Atrium (G10)

Abstract

Shortly after the term “soul food” was popularized on the heels of the “soul music” genre, culinary anthropologist and Sun Ra touring musician Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor published the cookbook-memoir Vibration Cooking or The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl (1970). In the tradition of Zora Neale Hurston’s ethnographic research and Ms. Edna Lewis’ culinary culture-bearing, Vibration Cooking challenged the primacy of the “soul food” concept by centring on food as a source of pride, a site of sensuality, an art of multisensory storytelling, a validation of Black womanhood and Black consciousness-raising. Deeply rooted in a musical sensibility, Smart-Grosvenor wrote, “When I cook, I never measure or weigh anything. I cook by vibration.” Through her cultural anthropological writing, she pinned an intersection of music/sound, sensuality, and culinary perception that has yet to be explored through the lens of music or sound studies.

Probing that constellation of soulful, musical, sensual, and culinary perception, the textbook Ultrasonic Tastemakers: A Critical Gastromusicology is a ground-breaking critical investigation into the interconnectedness of African American embodiment, oral transmission, cultural production, wealth extraction, and consumption in the global marketplace as emblematic of what I coin as gastromusicophysics or multisensory “taste.”  Highly competent culture-bearers in the marketplace that I call “ultrasonic tastemakers” resonate with and register their talent, tapping into high vibrations, and frequencies of creative expressions, decision making and influencing what is, will be, and their products endure as en vogue, succulent, and mellifluous.

Biography

Dr. Alisha Lola Jones is an associate professor in the faculty of music at the University of Cambridge. Additionally, as a performer-scholar, she consults museums, conservatories, seminaries, and arts organizations on curriculum, live and virtual event programming, and content development. Dr. Jones’ book Flaming? The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance (Oxford University Press) breaks ground by analyzing the role of gospel music-making in constructing and renegotiating gender identity among Black men. Dr. Jones has been the recipient several awards for research, including: the Ruth Stone Prize (SEM), Music in American Culture prize (AMS), and Philip Brett prize (AMS). She is completing two books: a gastromusicology book entitled Ultrasonic Tastemakers: Towards a Critical Gastromusicology and Sound Our Signatures: A Womanist Approach to Music Research, which sets forth anti-oppressive ways of listening to Black women. She is the album note researcher and writer for the 2022 Grammy nominated Requiem for the Enslaved by Carlos Simon, while regularly researching for the London Symphony Orchestra, the Aspen Festival and Detroit Symphony Orchestra, to name some. Rev. Dr. Jones is a fourth-generation ordained preacher on both sides in the Word of Faith and Pentecostal traditions. Dr Jones and her sister Rev. Angela Marie Jones are co-owners of Paradise Media Group, a Black women-owned radio company with stations based in Oxford and Henderson, NC.