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Various black populations around the world cope with violence and poverty through inventive song and dance in a manner outside of conventional notions of humanity, Jayna Brown, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside, said during an intimate gathering of students and faculty in the Haldeman Center on Thursday.
In her lecture, Brown showed images from a 1999 music video featuring the sounds of the electronica band Leftfield and the vocals of the famous hip hop icon Afrika Mumbaataa.
"In the underground, bodies can thrive to a different frequency," Brown said about the video.
Brown used the main character of the video a blind and injured man wandering the streets of New York City as an analogy for the marginalization of black people as a result of the spread of "globalizing capital." The video's main character also provokes a discussion of some of the ways victims of poverty, repression and war express themselves through music and dance, Brown said.
"[My research] explores the link of music to an alternative way of inhabiting the body," Brown said.