Sonorous Worlds: Musical Enchantment in Venezuela

Yana Stainova is an interdisciplinary scholar interested in art, migration, and the lived experience of violence in Latin America. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Brown University, and is currently assistant professor of anthropology at McMaster University.

Why have thousands of Venezuelan youth and their families chosen to invest their desires in classical music? In this talk, I will discuss my new book Sonorous Worlds: Musical Enchantment in Venezuela, based on 16 months of ethnographic research with musicians from Venezuela’s classical music program El Sistema. The state-funded initiative provides free classical music education and instruments to almost a million young people all over the country. The book looks at how these young people engage with what I call “enchantment,” that is, how through musical practices they create worlds that escape, rupture, and critique dominant structures of power. My focus on artistic practice and enchantment allows me to theorize the successes and failures of political projects through the lens of the everyday transformations in people’s lives.

Light refreshments will be served.