Songs in the Key of Life at 50: Symposium - Incite at Columbia University

To mark the 50th anniversary of Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, CSSD is organizing a full-day symposium and accompanying concert.

The symposium and accompanying concert will reflect on the groundbreaking album’s insights into life in the wake of civil rights and decolonial movements across the African world, and on the legacies of Wonder’s hopeful vision of a future grounded in love and shared humanity. They will kick off a yearlong series of public events and study sessions that respond to the U.S. semiquincentennial and offer a critical counternarrative to officially sanctioned accounts of the country’s past by focusing on works with alternative anniversaries which illuminate the conditions and experiences of minoritized communities.

Held in partnership with The People’s Forum and the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University, the symposium features four panels, each focusing on one side of Wonder’s four-sided album. Panels will bring together scholars and musicians for conversations that incorporate close listening and improvisational demonstrations. Themes broached in discussions will range from urban Black and brown impoverishment and jazz as a form of Black resistance to Black familial love and Global South solidarities. Panelists include Marcus J. Moore, LaFrae Sci, Samora Pinderhughes, Naomi Extra, Naima Cochrane, and Shana L. Redmond. The symposium will end with a jam session building off of the album’s bonus tracks, led by Dr. Guthrie Ramsey’s Musiqology, and a reception.

Following the symposium, CSSD is proud to co-present, along with Pique-nique, Boom Collective and The Radio in the Orchard (TRiO), a concert featuring musician Elliott Skinner. Organized as part of Pique-nique’s “Take Two” series, the concert will include a listening session of Wonder’s album followed by a reinterpretation by Skinner. Blending soul, blues, folk, and rock, singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Elliott Skinner creates music that combines atmospheric vocals and rich instrumentation with an emphasis on personal storytelling. His work draws from the Black Radical Music Tradition, a lineage of Black artists who have used music to explore identity, confront social realities, and imagine new possibilities for freedom. To purchase tickets for the concert, follow the link here. This eventbrite only secures your ticket for the symposium.