By: UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music
View the original article on UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.
Have you ever heard the color green? How about tasted Miles Davis’s “Birth of the Cool”?
The phenomenon of experiencing something through unrelated senses is called synesthesia. Jenny Olivia Johnson, associate professor of musicology and dean of inclusive excellence at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, encountered the phenomenon frequently in her dissertation research on the effect of trauma on memory and perception. Interviewing trauma survivors, Johnson found that synesthesia was a common reaction.
Then, a sudden realization led her down an unexpected path.
“People with neurological disabilities often experienced synesthesia too,” said Johnson. “It was the first time I realized that there might be a connection between trauma and disabilities.”
From October 16-19, The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music will host a four-day conference on trauma and disability in the arts (visit the conference webpage for a full schedule). Johnson organized the conference, which will combine humanities research and artistic perspectives to bring focus to questions about how the experiences of trauma and disabilities are both generative and reflective in the arts.
Panels will cover a wide range of topics, from the soundscape of America’s midcentury polio epidemic and alternative medicine on vinyl to immigration trauma in nineteenth-century popular music and the politics of orchestral community outreach. Additional sessions will offer close readings of trauma as represented in contemporary television shows including The Bear and Treme as well as albums such as Lingua Ignota’s Sinner Get Ready and Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers.
The conference opens on Thursday, October 16 with immersive, multisensory art installations on display and a three-set concert. Headlining will be Maria Chávez, a DJ and sound artist. Using her rare RAKE double needle that reads two different parts of the record at the same time with multiple turntables, Chávez is renowned for her inventive soundscapes built from record shards. She will also speak about her own experience with a brain disorder that led to surgery in 2020 and kept her from touring for several years.
“After resting, healing for 5 years after a major medical procedure, it feels full circle to present my work for a symposium that focuses on how everybody experiences the arts,” said Chávez. “I am so excited to create a site-specific sound installation performance for the audience where they get to decide my sonic choices in real time. By embodying chance the piece becomes ours rather than my own. And there’s nothing like breaking a record to connect some new neuron pathways that exercise our neuroplasticity.”
Another important aspect of the conference will be its deeply participatory and open nature. Pedagogy workshops will directly engage the audience, including a deep listening workshop with composer Nomi Epstein, whose interest focuses on sonic fragility. Panels are constructed to bring multiple perspectives to bear on the same questions so that they can be examined from multiple angles.
The panel on musical theater and trauma, for instance, will combine theater professionals, scholars and student performers from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television. And while musicals may enjoy a popular reputation as light entertainment, they can deal with heavy themes.
“Musical theater often addresses trauma,” said Ray Knapp, distinguished professor of musicology and director of the Center for Musical Humanities. “And when an actor is playing a character who is experiencing or processing trauma, they have to reach into their own experiences to identify with the trauma. Then they perform it not just once, but over and over again, night after night.”
The panel deals with this subject by bringing in people with different experiences. Theater professionals will discuss how they help voice actors prepare for roles where characters experience or process trauma. Scholars will discuss how portrayals of trauma can affect the audience. Actors will discuss their related experiences. Students performers will perform as part of the panel..
The question of multiple perspectives is important for the conference, which is asking humanistic questions of topics frequently reserved for medicine and neuroscience. But given that the arts have historically been a coping mechanism for humans to deal with trauma and disabilities, and given all the people that the arts touch, the subject necessarily engages a broad number of scholars. And considering different points of view can sometimes lead to startling realizations.
“We sometimes think of disabilities in a negative way,” said Johnson. “But, many people on the autistic spectrum and people who have sensory disabilities think of them as superpowers. Their ability to taste sound or hear colors gives them a vital edge as artists and as members of the audience.”
Theorizing Trauma and Disability in the Arts takes place in the Schoenberg Music Building from Thursday, October 16 through Sunday, October 19.
