ON LOOP / Performance + Book Party

Chicago has house. Detroit has techno. But Oakland slaps.

In On Loop: Black Sonic Politics in Oakland (UC Press), local author Alex Werth (DJ Sasha) argues that social science and public debate overlook the ways that popular music and sound animate the politics of race and space. But Black dance music and sonic practices are key to decoding the everyday social movements that have made and remade Oakland into one of America's most iconic and contested cities.

In this dynamic event, Werth will introduce readers to the main themes of the book through a multimedia performance that mixes text, images, videos, and live soundscaping. It will be followed by a discussion and audience Q&A moderated by César Alvarez. Stay after to celebrate and connect over refreshments.

Details

The event takes place in The Workroom at 33 Hawley.

Doors open at 6:30pm. Seating is first come, first served.

Copies will be available for purchase with Broadside Books.

About the Participants

Alex (Sasha) Werth is a writer, researcher, and DJ from Northampton. While living for over a decade in the East Bay, he served as a Curatorial Fellow at the Matatu Festival of Stories, Public Imagination Fellow at Yerba Buena Center of the Arts, and co-curator and resident DJ of Oakland’s Good Culture. In 2018, he worked on the City of Oakland's pathbreaking plan for cultural equity and development. His essays have appeared in Africa Is a Country, Antipode, City, FIELD, Journal of Popular Music Studies, and Sounding Out. With a BA from Brown University and a PhD in Geography from UC Berkeley, he now works as a policy and research consultant specializing in tenants' rights and housing justice in the Bay Area. Returning to Northampton in 2023, he co-organizes a local party series called Village Disco. Learn more at alexwerth.me.

César Alvarez is a composer, lyricist, playwright, and performance maker. They create large experimental musicals as non-normative possibility spaces for embodiment, inter-dimensionality, socio-political transformation, kinship, and coexistence. With a background as a jazz saxophonist, band leader, and sound artist, César's work inhabits a space between the worlds of theater, music, performance art, and social practice. César was a 2018-20 Princeton Arts Fellow and a recipient of The Jonathan Larson Award, The Kleban Prize in Musical Theatre for lyrics, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2022. They are an Assistant Professor of Music at Dartmouth College. Learn more at cesaralvarez.net.