Music and HIV/AIDS – A Look at Then and Now

A Virtual Presentation on Zoom with Matthew J. Jones and John Seesholtz

Monday, October 12, 5:30 pm on Zoom (MST)
Click here to view the event recording

Free and Open to the Public
 

5:30  Love Don't Need a Reason: The Life and Music of Michael Callen
A talk by the book's author, Dr. Matthew J. Jones

Michael Callen (1955-1993) is a forgotten hero of the US AIDS activist movement. Singer, songwriter, author, and activist, Callen played a pivotal role in the response to AIDS during the first fifteen years of the epidemic in America. Based on ten years of archival and ethnographic research, my forthcoming book, Love Don’t Need a Reason: The Life and Music of Michael Callen (Punctum Books, 2020) repositions Michael in the broader history of HIV/AIDS. This talk considers songs about AIDS from Callen’s solo records as well as from his time with The Flirtations, a queer a cappella group he co-founded in the late 1980s. This talk will introduce Callen, his biography, and his music and position him within the larger AIDS movement in the United States while also reflecting on his music, and music about AIDS more broadly, in light of the current global coronavirus pandemic. I also discuss some of the theoretical questions that arose during the writing of the book, including hybrid methodologies and conducting research as an “independent” scholar.

6:15  The Lost Songs of the AIDS Quilt Songbook
A talk by Dr. John Seesholtz, University of Colorado Boulder

The AIDS Quilt Songbook was a musical response to the shame surrounding the outbreak of the HIV virus and was one of the first art song publications to deal with the topic of HIV and AIDS. It was created to parallel the AIDS Quilt NAMES Project as "a never- ending work whose meaning and spirit is renewed and redefined with every addition." This concept of additions has continued the expansion of the AIDS Quilt Songbook Project from 1993 to 2020.  The AIDS Quilt Songbook project has over sixty-seven documented additions, but only eighteen of the sixty-seven additions were published.  The Lost Songs of the AIDS Quilt Songbook, is a collection of the previously unpublished pieces dedicated to this project and new pieces submitted to the collector.  Dr. Seesholtz will lecture on the progression of the Quilt Project from 1980 – 2020 and perform a few selections from the new publication. 
 

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Matthew J. Jones is a Houston-based musicologist and cultural critic. A first-generation college student from rural northern Georgia, he received a doctorate in Critical and Comparative Studies in Music from the University of Virginia in 2014. His work explores the relationships between LGBTQIA+ culture, music, media, and activism. His book, Love Don't Need a Reason: The Life and Music of Michael Callen (Punctum Books) will be published in 2020. His work has also appeared in The Journal of the Society for American Music, The Journal of Popular Music Studies, Women and Music, and the Oxford Handbook of Music and Queerness. In 2017, he won the ASCAP Deems Taylor/ Virgil Thompson prize for concert music criticism for his essay, “Enough of Being Basely Tearful: ‘Glitter and Be Gay’ and the Camp Politics of Queer Resistance.” He is currently at work on a second book, Popular Music-Making During the AIDS Crisis: 1981–1996 (Routledge, forthcoming).

John Seesholtz, dramatic baritone and vocal pedaoguge, is the Director of Vocal Pedagogy at the University of Colorado. His most recent operatic performances include; Madame Butterfly (Sharpless), Florencia en el Amazonas (Alvaro), Verdi’s Otello (Iago), Candide (Pangloss), Silvio (Pagliacci),Verdi's Falstaff (Ford), and Gianni Schicchi (title role). Some of his solo concert performances include Camina Burana, Brahm’s Requiem, Five Mystical Songs, Sea Symphony, and Dona Nobis Pacem by Vaughan Williams. He has multiple articles published with the Journal of Singing and currently holds positions with the National Association of Teachers of Singing, Up North Vocal Institute, La Lirica Musica, CU NOW,  and Art Song Colorado.  His coming publications include, “Hyperadduction: A Pedagogical Approach for the 21^st Century Voice Instructor,” and a musical collection entitled, “The Lost Songs of the AIDS Quilt Songbook, Vol 1.”  In September, he released a video/audio project titled, “Marginalized Voices,” with Art Song Colorado.  The project highlights compositions and poetry of Black, Latinx, LGBTQ+, Cis-Female, and Jewish artists.  He holds vocal performance and pedagogy degrees from University of Michigan and University of North Texas.