Intro

Jadele McPherson, Ph.D. is an artist-scholar who has produced an extensive body of work as a vocalist, musician, and theatermaker. She wields her voice and creates sound art to produce collaborative projects based in Black experimental and improvisational lineages, and to explore healing and embodied memory in the African Diaspora. Her interdisciplinary theater collective Lukumi Arts (2008), has produced an array of projects focused on sound and healing, and mutual aid that narrate local histories and then immerse audiences in those stories through live, interactive musical experiences.

As an artist and anthropologist she is interested in studying the impact of sound on social and cultural movements throughout the African Diaspora, with a focus on Afro-Cuban arts and intra-Caribbean migrations. Her current work amplifies the stories of Afro-Latinx artists and historical actors who participated in labor organizing, securing medical care, forming mutual aid networks and dismantling racial segregation in the U.S. Dr. McPherson is currently revising her dissertation Vamos a Vencer-We Will Overcome: The Sonic Performances of Afro-Cubans in Tampa into her first book manuscript.

Jadele McPherson graduated from the CUNY Graduate Center, where she was the CUNY Dissertation Fellow at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture from 2022-23. More of Dr. McPherson’s work is here.