Music and Abolition - Creating a world without policing: Music’s role in imagination, experimentation, and collectivity

Music and Abolition - Creating a world without policing: Music’s role in imagination, experimentation, and collectivity

Authors

Lily Finnegan

Files

Download Paper (.pdf) (95 KB)

Download Presentation (.pdf) (2.4 MB)

Download Audio Files (.zip) (512.4 MB)

Download Scores (.zip) (1.3 MB)

Abstract

Music and Abolition explores music’s role in imagination, experimentation, and collectivity in creating a world without policing. Through abolition violent systems that maintain hierarchy will be replaced with sustainable, non violent systems. Total liberation will only come if the police are abolished. No amount of reform can change them when the root is tied into colonialism. In order to do this imagination and dreams are key in envisioning the world we want to see. For this project I used five books as the basis for my research: “We do this Til We Free us” by Mariame Kaba, “Carceral Capitalism” by Jackie Wang, “Are Prisons Obsolete?” by Angela Davis, “Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination” by Robin D. G. Kelley, and “The End of Policing” by Alex S. Vitale. Through music we can explore these ideas with experimentation and collectivity. The music for this project was written in a way that fostered non hierarchical band structures and free improvisation.

Publication Date

7-1-2021

Campus

Boston Campus

Comments

Project Components: paper (.pdf), presentation (.pdf), audio files (ZIP file containing 6 .wav files), scores (ZIP file containing 6 .pdf documents).

Music and Abolition - Creating a world without policing: Music’s role in imagination, experimentation, and collectivity

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