Dr. Uzoma Miller
Uzoma Miller will be speaking with a DJ on “Standing on the Funk: A Public Dialogue on Black Ohio’s Legacy of Musical Pop Culture” at the Black Alumni Reunion on September 16th at 1pm at Bentley Hall 129. increase.
His talk, free and open to the public, explores how African Americans from Ohio have permeated and influenced mainstream culture.
Miller, a visiting professor of African-American studies at the College of Arts and Sciences, said: He discusses the intersection of race, society, and culture through the lens of the musical contributions of Black people in Ohio.
“Arguably, there are few people on the planet between the ages of 5 and 95 who have not heard the music of Michael Jackson. It incorporates licks that have catapulted him to global superstardom, sold 20 million copies, and is laced with disco-funk with ties to Ohio,” said Miller.
Miller weaves across generations and genres while detailing Ohio’s black influences, including one of modern gospel’s most famous anthems and one of jazz’s most sophisticated musical stylists. He also describes one of his earliest documented blues recordings, his samples of current hip-hop, the funk capital of the world.
“Driving from iGen or Generation Z’s Bounce and Bob to Childish Gambino’s ‘Redbone’, Kid Cudi’s ‘Metamorphosis’ or ‘IMY2’ with Drake. But the direct and indirect Ohio connection to all these songs may not be as ‘popular’ as these hits,” Miller said.
Miller also shows Ohioan influences ranging from R&B to rap to the Rolling Stones.
“It should come as no surprise that R&B music is so heavily consumed and celebrated. Although Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday are more commonly known by their names, the first blues record that happened to sell a million copies in its first year was recorded on the banks of the Ohio River. It was by a female artist, and it paved the way for all the blues artists that would come next to Kentucky,” Miller said.
“Ask anyone and you’d be hard-pressed to find a list of the greatest rappers of all time that doesn’t include Biggie Smalls (The Notorious BIG) and Tupac. Multiple tracks by both artists, as well as multiple tracks from across the hip-hop world. The track is a literal musical descendant of pure funk and silky soul from our Ohio DNA,” he added. “And the Rolling Stones, one of the greatest charting bands of all time still filling stadiums past 80, had a hit covering an Ohio-based artist in 1964. You can’t discuss American pop culture without honoring Ohio’s tremendous contributions.”
About Uzoma Miller
Miller is a graduate of Morehouse College (Bachelor’s Degree), Jackson State University (Master’s Degree in Political Science), and the California Institute of Integral Studies (Ph.D. Transformative Inquiry). His paper, “Dynamic Modes of Storytelling: A Reflexive Ethnography of the Cultural Resource Landscape at Fisk University,” explores how members of the institution’s community interact with a vast array of artifacts, archival collections, works of art and museums, and historic homes. We critically evaluated how we know and apply our reservoirs.
By providing a theoretical foundation for experiential learning as a pedagogy, Miller builds on 21 years of innovative higher and secondary education services through interdisciplinary disciplines and modalities across the Southeast Asian region. He wrote his 25 entries in The Greenwood Press’ Handbook of African-American Business (2006) and the oft-cited monograph “Talented 10th Revisited” in 2011.
In 2022, Miller was a commissioned lecturer at the Global Arts Center in Nashville for the Black Arts in America: The Music of Repression and Survival series. He was a commentator on “Education of the Black Masses” at the 107th Annual Conference of the Association for the Studies of African American Life and History, and “Archive Activism: Repatriation, Regeneration, and Rehabilitation” at the 67th Annual Conference of the Ethnomusicological Society. Chair of the Agency. A conference held jointly with the Musicological Society of America and the Music Theory Society.
Miller’s current research is rooted in connecting the dots between famous and lesser-known artists with the historically black colleges and universities that permeated the realm of popular music.
Comments
Post a Comment