The Yale Council on African Studies and Yale Institute of Sacred Music. invite you to the virtual international conference on “The Black Indian Ocean: Slavery, Religion, and Expressive Cultures (1400-1700)”, on April 2-3, 2025.
The conference explores new perspectives on the impact of slavery, religions, migration and displacement across the Indian Ocean on Afro-Asian communities and their expressive cultures in the early modern world (1400-1700). It aims to uncover the untold musical histories of migration and migratory histories of artistic and material cultures of Afro-Asian communities in the Indian Ocean world and its diasporas, how these mobilities can be identified in various cultural manifestations, and how expressive cultures and ritual articulated identity, self-fashioning, community and resistance to human rights’ violations.
More info can be found on the conference website here.
Please find attached the conference poster and program, registration is required.
The event will culminate in a live performance by the Afro-Asian Kukutana Ensemble (founded by Dr. Janie Cole) of Gabriel’s Odyssey, a musical and visual narrative of slavery, conversion, persecution, and resilience from a 16th-century Indian Ocean world, at Yale Luce Hall on April 4, 2025, 7.30pm. Free and open to the public, but registration is required. The performance will also be livestreamed.
Gabriel’s Odyssey is a vibrant narrative that tells the true 16th-century story of Gabriel, a Beta Israel Ethiopian Jew, who was abducted as a young child and sold into slavery in the Arab world, and his woeful wanderings between faiths, love and persecution in Asia to his final encounter with the Portuguese Inquisition in Goa, as based on historical reconstructions by Matteo Salvadore. Drawing on imaginary and sumptuous soundscapes, visuals and voices of an early modern Indian Ocean world, Gabriel’s life represents a universal story of oppression, faith, migration and self-fashioning like the experiences of countless other early modern Africans.
Virtual Conference, The Black Indian Ocean: Slavery, Religion, and Expressive Cultures (1400-1700)
