This event has been postponed until the 2022–2023 academic year.
Lectures in Musicology presents Encountering Afro-Sweden: Ryan Skinner in dialogue with Stevie Nii-Adu Mensah. For this public event, Skinner and Mensah will share excerpts from their recent work, both scholarly and creative, meditating on the theme of “diaspora,” with a particular emphasis on the Black and African presence and experience in contemporary Sweden. Framed as a call-and-response, these presentations will then turn to structured Q&A, with Skinner inviting Mensah to give voice to his personal journey, creative work, and diasporic relationship to the two places he calls “home” in the world — Ghana and Sweden.
Hybrid format (in-person, with virtual option). Co-sponsored by the Office of Outreach and Engagement, the Music and Dance Library, the EMIC Graduate Student Association, and the Ethnomusicology program.
Stevie Nii-Adu Mensah is a Ghanaian-Swedish teacher, author, producer and musician who performs under the name “Mensahighlife.” Mensah is a man of many talents — he is a composer and arranger, whose work has been featured in Sweden, Ghana and the U.S. (https://afropop.org/audio-programs/a-visit-to-afro-sweden); a session musician and producer, who has collaborated with many of Ghana's and Sweden’s top R&B, Soul, Hip-Hop and Afropop artists (including Nshona Muzick, originator of Azonto, a widely popular genre of Ghanaian Afropop); a published author, whose work (in Swedish and English) explores the intersections of African youth culture, climate change and diaspora; and an actor and director, with a current solo stage production in Sweden, Kallt som fan ("It’s Cold, Oo"), reflecting on his father’s immigrant experience as a performing artist from Ghana in Sweden during the 1960s and '70s.
Ryan Skinner is associate professor of Music and African American and African Studies. His work focuses on the expressive cultures and social worlds of contemporary Africa and its European diaspora, with extensive fieldwork conducted in Mali and Sweden. His most recent book, Afro-Sweden: Becoming Black in a Color-blind Country, is forthcoming (autumn 2022) with University of Minnesota Press.
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