Alex E. Chavez, associate professor of archeology at the University of Notre Dame and affiliate of the Initiative on Race and Resilience, will celebrate the release of his latest creative project, a studio album almost four years in the making, on Oct. 18. It is his debut solo album, connecting to his past influences and history and forging new collaborations across genres.
The multi-modal scholarly work is titled Sonorous Present. Produced by Grammy Award-winning producer Quetzal Flores, the album features luminaries from the worlds of poetry, traditional Mexican music, jazz, and R&B — including poet Roger Reeves (Guggenheim fellow, National Book Award finalist, and Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and Griffin Poetry Prize recipient), Martha Gonzalez (2022 MacArthur Fellow), Aloe Blacc (2015 Grammy Award nominee), Ramón Gutiérrez (2023 Grammy winner), and Lucía Gutiérrez Rebolloso (Winner of the 2022 Sarah Vaughn International Jazz Vocal Competition).
An immersive poetic and musical passage, Sonorous Present extends sonic meditations on loss, migration, and mourning across America’s borderlands as physical place and liminal space — ultimately inspired by the music and poetics of the award-winning book Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño (Duke 2017).
Check out the links below to listen and learn more about his new music and visual art.
Sonorous Present: Songs of Border Crossings, Sunrises, and Mournings
Originally published by at raceandresilience.nd.edu on October 15, 2024.