Nicole Mitchell’s Mandorla Awakening II and the Sounds of Afrofuturist Theory - Audrey Slote

In this week's episode, Audrey Slote guides listeners through an analysis of “Mandorla Island” from Nicole Mitchell’s experimental jazz album Mandorla Awakening II from 2017. This episode centers Mitchell’s own Afrofuturist, feminist writings as its primary music-theoretical framework and illuminates how such theorizing productively challenges canonical academic ways of thinking about music and its relationship to society.This episode was produced by Jason Jedlička along with Team Lead Anna Rose Nelson. Special thanks to peer reviewers Jacob Cupps and Caitlin Martinkus. Additional thanks to Steven Rings, Nicole Mitchell, and Jennifer Iverson.SMT-Pod’s theme music was written by Maria Tartaglia, with closing music by Yike Zhang. For supplementary materials on this episode and more information on our authors and composers, check out our website: https://smt-pod.org/episodes/