Despite the vast growth of diversity in music/arts practices, the general bodies of knowledge tend to neglect how diverse our hearing-listening profiles are, which affects how people generally think about music/arts and how artists and arts stakeholders do their practices. Through this talk, Jay Afrisando invites the audience to rethink and unlearn what we call “music” and share some best practices to tackle ableism in music/arts practices.

Jay Afrisando is a composer and multimedia artist working on aural diversity, disability, accessibility, and decolonizing arts practices, manifested in multisensory and antidisciplinary practices ranging from music-theater to installation, filmmaking, participatory performance, and listening walk.

He is a DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Fellow 2024 and an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

@jay_afrisando