The UVA Music Department presents "A WondaLand Nightmare: Antebellum's Score and AfroPessimissm", a colloquium by Dr. Gayle Murchison on Friday, April 25th at 3:30pm in 107 Old Cabell Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

The Black Lives Matter film genre-scripted and/or directed by Black film and video creators who overtly engage with the Black Lives Matter Movement, which protests shootings of unarmed African Americans-is the cultural engagement of #BLM. This genre began near the coining of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter and as protests grew during the Covid-19 pandemic. Filmmakers confronted police brutality and other racial issues. #BLM films, novels, music, and cultural expressions intersect with both Afrofuturism and Afropessimism. The film Antebellum (2020), directed by Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz, is a #BLM film, in this case Afro-pessimism. Though it, like #BLM, engages the struggle and protest against both overt and systemic racism, its plot twist turns of the racial fantasy of contemporary slavery as theme park.

Brothers Nate "Rocket" Wonder and Roman GianArthur, part of Janelle Monae's (the lead) Wondaland Arts Collective, composed a haunting post-modern film score that mashes up African-derived ostinato, timbral musical minimalist, timbral, and classic electronic music techniques to create a film score that effectively works with the script and art direction both to create the sense of displacement, confusion, the psychological terror of the characters onscreen and evoke these feelings in the audience. While vernacular and classical African American music are used as both diegetic and non-diegetic music Antebellum, the score —reflects the aesthetic of Monae and the Wondaland Arts Collective-is the driving force that brings the viewer into the mind of the lead character in a film in which both future and past are present.

Old Cabell Hall is located on the south end of UVA’s historic lawn, directly opposite the Rotunda (map). Parking is available in the central grounds parking garage on Emmet Street, in the C1 parking lot off McCormick Rd, and in the parking lots at the UVA Corner. Handicap parking is available in the small parking lot adjacent to Bryan Hall.

All programs are subject to change.

Contact UVA Music for more information at 434.924.3052 or music@virginia.edu.