Albert Murray—an American Original: Novelist, Essayist, Thinker. A One-day Symposium And Jazz Performance At Columbia University at Buell Hall, Columbia University Morningside Campus

In honor of the Albert Murray Centennial, this symposium will elaborate the Alabama-born Harlemite’s distinctive contribution to American thought and letters. From vernacular to fine art, downhome particulars to cosmopolitan and universal implications, Murray swings aesthetic statement in omni-American hues, and confronts entropy with excellence and epic affirmation despite the blues of the human condition. Murray’s blues idiom hero stomps the blues through elegance and eloquence, extending communal and national ideals. The topics for the symposium include: the influences on Murray’s work; his sui generis literary mastery; how and why he counter-stated “the folklore of white supremacy and the fakelore of black pathology”; and the profound cultural and philosophical reverberations of Murray's oeuvre. University of Pennsylvania professor Herman Beavers will deliver the Keynote Speech, and will be joined by other eminent writers and scholars who investigate Murray’s work with the multi-disciplinary depth it warrants. Jazz was central to Murray’s aesthetic, so the evening jazz performance by the Michael Carvin Experience will round out this celebration of the mind and style of this all-purpose, all-American 20th century intellectual. ...

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In honor of the Albert Murray Centennial, this symposium will elaborate the Alabama-born Harlemite’s distinctive contribution to American thought and letters. From vernacular to fine art, downhome particulars to cosmopolitan and universal implications, Murray swings aesthetic statement in omni-American hues, and confronts entropy with excellence and epic affirmation despite the blues of the human condition. Murray’s blues idiom hero stomps the blues through elegance and eloquence, extending communal and national ideals. The topics for the symposium include: the influences on Murray’s work; his sui generis literary mastery; how and why he counter-stated “the folklore of white supremacy and the fakelore of black pathology”; and the profound cultural and philosophical reverberations of Murray's oeuvre. University of Pennsylvania professor Herman Beavers will deliver the Keynote Speech, and will be joined by other eminent writers and scholars who investigate Murray’s work with the multi-disciplinary depth it warrants. Jazz was central to Murray’s aesthetic, so the evening jazz performance by the Michael Carvin Experience will round out this celebration of the mind and style of this all-purpose, all-American 20th century intellectual.
The symposium will take place beginning at 9 AM in Buell Hall on Columbia's Morningside Campus, running until 5:30.
A performance by the Michael Carvin Experience will take place at 7 PM in the Low Faculty Room of Low Library, on Columbia's Morningside Campus.
For a full schedule of presentations, speakers, and venues, please see http://jazz.columbia.edu/content/albert-murray%E2%80%94-american-original-novelist-essayist-thinker.
The symposium and performance are free and open to the public. Please RSVP to ym189@columbia.edu

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