Columbia College Dean's Lecture Explores American Music February 21, 2011

Of all the genres, sub-genres, and second-rate spinoffs, few musical forms are as distinctive as hip-hop and contemporary country. The two are also distinctly American, pointing toward two different paths of the American Dream. And while these routes rarely intersect, the roots of both genres can be traced to the same place: the segregated South.

Today, a different kind of segregation exists, as the respective audiences of hip-hop and country music largely remain at opposite ends of the American racial spectrum.

On February 24, Columbia College Chicago raises the question: In a society as diverse as ours, one in which musical genres give birth to sub-cultures whose inhabitants possess vastly different beliefs, values, and moral codes, what does the “real” American look like? Is there still “one nation” that is “indivisible”?

Join Dean Deborah H. Holdstein for the Spring 2011 Dean’s Lecture, as she welcomes Dr. Stephanie Shonekan to the lectern to discuss the power of contemporary popular music and how it provides a foundation with which to analyze matters of race, class, religion, and patriotism in modern day America.

This free and public lecture is at 5:30 p.m. in Columbia College’s Music Center Concert Hall, 1014 S. Michigan Ave.

To RSVP, contact Alexandra Garcia in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences at agarcia@colum.edu or 312.369.8217 by Monday, February 21.

Official Website: http://www.colum.edu/Academics/School_of_Liberal_Arts_and_Sciences/las-deans-lecture.php