Marquis Hill’s Modern Flows: Musical Metapragmatics and Blackness

Part of the Hollander Musicology Lecture Series

In this talk, Jonathan A. Gomez argues for greater consideration of “metapragmatic indexicality” in understanding Black musical identity formation. Through detailed transcription and analysis of two performances by Chicago-born, genre-crossing trumpeter Marquis Hill, he shows that this kind of interdisciplinary musico-semiotic analysis offers another avenue for understanding how Black Americans hear and represent themselves and Blackness in musical sound.

Jonathan A. Gómez is an assistant professor in the department of musicology in the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance, and affiliated faculty with the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS). His research centers on Black American musics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and is situated at the intersection of music studies and Black studies. His work has been published in the Journal of the American Musicological Society, and his book project tentatively titled, “The Way We Play”: Hearing Black American History and Musical Identity is under contract with University of Chicago Press. He is also a professional jazz saxophonist.

Read his full bio here.