I am an ethnomusicologist and violin player from Colombia. As an ethnomusicologist I am very interested in understanding the silences in the history of our field, through an exploration of the complexities in the relationship among scholars. My project for HASTAC focuses on understanding the collaborations between the US scholar George List, who was a key figure in the US ethnomusicology, and the Afro Colombian scholars and activists Delia and Manuel Zapata Olivella. It is known that these three scholars collaborated in understanding Afro Colombian musical traditions, nevertheless, it is not well known to what extent the contributions of Manuel and Delia informed List’s scholarship.
Using materials from Indiana University Archives and The Archives of Traditional music, I aim to create a visual representation of the exchange of ideas among these scholars and how it had a direct impact on Afro Colombian movements during the 60s in Colombia.