FINA 1001/MUSI 1006 section 001

Wednesday 3.30-5.30pm

Earthtones, UConn’s exciting global music vocal ensemble directed by Dr. Janie Cole,  brings to life the musical cultures of different communities, geographical locations, or time periods from around the world as a means to broaden and deepen knowledge, tolerance, and understanding of people and their wider connections to humanity, history, spirituality, human rights, gender, religion, identity, politics, belief systems, race, and social justice.

Each semester an overarching theme is explored through key music, songs, testimony, short readings, and multimedia talks with guest speakers, to engage with one or more global cultures, historical time periods, or genres in depth with the goal of creating innovative and intentional music programs that open new spaces of dialogue and foster a deeper understanding of our shared humanity and resilience.

The Spring 2025 theme: “The iWitness Project: Mapping Music, Resistance, Torture”:

Through first-hand testimony, engagement with key readings, and interactive multimedia presentations, we will explore the dichotomy of music as resistance/music as torture in key contemporary case studies of profound social change, extinction/survival modes, and human rights atrocities from around the world, including struggle songs from apartheid South Africa, music in WWII Nazi concentration camps, songs of resistance in the Salvadoran Civil War and Argentinian dictatorships, songs to incite violence in the Rwandan Genocide, Indian Hindutva Pop, the US War on Terror, and global musical resistance in the Covid-19 Pandemic.

#teachingwithtestimony  #strongerthanhate  #musicandhumanrights  #thepowerofmusic #musicastorture     #iWitness

Earthtones is open to all university students and community members. It requires no auditions and fulfills 1 credit towards the CA1 Arts and Humanities requirement.  The course can be retaken with a change of content to fulfill the CA1 requirement for 3 credits.