Ana María Ochoa to give Inaugural Bloch Lecture on Feb. 7

January 27, 2025

To welcome and honor visiting Bloch Professor Ana María Ochoa, the Department of Music is putting the finishing touches in place for the inaugural lecture of Professor Ochoa’s series of five Bloch Lectures on February 7th. Titled “Sonic Extractivisms: Historiographies of Music and Sound in Times of Climate Change,” the five-part lecture series will explore an anthropogenic history of sound during the first half of the twentieth century (up to the 1960s), a period of intense Ana María Ochoaimperial expansion of the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean.  

Regarding Professor Ochoa’s residency, David Milnes, Chair of the Department of Music, said “It is an incredible opportunity for our campus community to have a scholar of Ana María Ochoa’s magnitude deliver the 2025 Bloch Lectures. Her unique insight and deep knowledge of the subject matter will make this a can’t-miss series of lectures.”

Ana María Ochoa is an ethnomusicologist and a professor in the Newcomb Department of Music, the Department of Communication and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Tulane University. Her work addresses histories of listening and the decolonial, on sound studies and climate change, and on the relationship between the creative industries, the literary and the sonic in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her current projects explore the bioacoustics of life and death in colonial histories of the Americas.

Each of Professor Ochoa’s lectures, listed below, will take place from 4:30-6:00pm in Wu Performance Hall (Room 125) of Morrison Hall. To commemorate this series of lectures from an esteemed visiting professor, a special reception will be held following the February 7th lecture.

February 7 Anthropogenic sounds and ethnomusicological histories

February 21The United Fruit Company’s sonic investments

March 14 Rethinking the genealogies of ambient sound

April 11 Myth, song and indigenous film in northern Colombia

April 25 Perspectivism’s auditory history

For any questions about the 2025 Bloch Lectures or media inquiries, please contact Prof. Marié Abe at marie.abe@berkeley.edu.