David Schroeder Music & Culture Lecture Series

The Fountain School of Performing Arts proudly hosts the David Schroeder Music & Culture lectures. This exciting PUBLIC series features distinguished scholars presenting research on music and culture, drawing on a range of disciplinary approaches and exploring diverse repertories. Join our community鈥檚 conversation.聽

鈥楪o, Boy, Go!鈥�: Child Pianist Frank "Sugar聽Chile" Robinson and the Commodification of Black Boyhood
-with Dr. Jacqueline Warwick

Sept. 25 | 12:00PM-1:00PM聽
Room 406, 鲍鱼tv Arts Centre
free and open to the public

With a focus on Frank Robinson (b. Detroit, 1938), this lecture explores the ways in which child musicians appeal to adult audiences. A Black child prodigy of boogie woogie piano, Robinson was a star in the 1940s, before the activism of Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King, and he performed at the White House for President Harry Truman. Robinson was self-taught, and his parents were discouraged from giving him piano lessons; this presentation explores the function of聽 formal music training for child stars. Through study of key performances and compositions, Jacqueline considers what 鈥淪ugar Chile鈥� offered to audiences of the time, and how his music is heard today.

Jacqueline Warwick is a musicologist and Dean, Academic, at NSCAD University. She is the author of聽Girl Groups, Girl Culture: Popular Music and Identity in the 1960s聽(2007) and聽Music, Gender, and Sexuality Studies: A Teacher鈥檚 Guide聽(2023). She was Senior Editor for the聽Grove Dictionary of American Music, 2^nd听别诲.听(2013), and co-editor of聽Musicological Identities: Essays for Susan McClary聽(2008) and聽Voicing Girlhood in Popular Music聽(2016). She has also written on topics ranging from the Beatles, backup singers, the musical聽Annie, and Michael Jackson. Her current project is聽Child鈥檚 Play: Musical Prodigies and the Performance of Childhood,聽a book under contract with Oxford University Press.