Lecture on Soul, Salsa, and South Atlantic Migrations

Pablo Davis will give a presentation on "Soul, Salsa, and South Atlantic Migrations," at 3 p.m. Friday, April 30, in Lane 132 on Virginia Tech's campus. The event is free and open to the public.

Davis, director of the South Atlantic Humanities Center, is a historian who has a joint appointment with the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy and the University of Virginia. He is a native Argentine who performs and researches both soul and salsa.

Davis' presentation will focus on the relationship between music, migration, and settlement in the U.S. South Atlantic. During the 20th century, millions of sons and daughters of Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Puerto Rico, and other South Atlantic places, left their homes to seek work and lives elsewhere in the United States, particularly the Northeast. The urban musical genres that came to be known as "soul" and "salsa" can be thought of as the sound of people in movement. This talk will offer recorded examples of soul and salsa in order to consider the thematics, musical structures (especially rhythm), and conditions of production of these forms of music in light of the massive migrations that sustained them.

For more information, contact Anita Puckett (apuckett@vt.edu or 231-9526).