New York State Of Music

Assistant Professor of Music Caroline Polk O'Meara will give a talk titled "New York Noise: Music, Space, and Place in Twentieth Century America." In the early 1980s, downtown musicians and audiences of all kinds found in hip-hop the promise of an exciting new attitude toward making music, a radical rethinking of musical form. Looking for a new audience, hip-hoppers from New York's African American and Latino neighborhoods uptown had come to Lower Manhattan's thriving club scene. They influenced rock musicians, who wrote songs inspired by the rhythmic and vocal innovations of hip-hop. This talk explores the moment in the early 1980s represented by the New York Rocker cover, a moment when hip-hoppers from Uptown and the primarily white punk rockers from the Lower East Side came together to celebrate the new musical practices of hip-hop. The talk will focus particularly on the music of the Tom Tom Club. Time: 1-2 p.m. Location: GAR 2.108 Admission: Free