You might think David Byrne’s American Utopia on Broadway is a concert. It’s not. Yet, it’s not exactly a play or a musical. It’s something else outside the box. The Talking Heads frontman— along with choreographer Annie-B Parsons’ and a band of international musicians, vocalists, and dancers—creates a show about exploring the unconventional, especially when it comes to unconventional thought and thought processes.
American Utopia made host Ruthie Fierberg wonder: How many solutions to society’s conflicts might we be overlooking because we think the way we have always thought? American Utopia performer Tendayi Kuumba and experts Dr. Vinoo Alluri and Dr. Alejandro Lleras join us to explore: What problems could we solve if we used more of our minds and used our minds differently? Could we achieve an American Utopia?
Listen to the album of David Byrne’s American Utopia.
Watch David Byrne’s American Utopia on HBOMax.
Create the Change
- Volunteer with Headcount to register voters at a performance of American Utopia
- Volunteer with Headcount in general
- Cultivate new and varied ways of thinking:
- Enhance your own synesthesia
- Try any of these “6 Ways to Rewire Your Brain”
- If your main way of processing and working is to sit in one spot and concentrate, try talking a walk, dancing, exercising to make your brain work differently by engaging different activity patterns in your brain.
- Develop your “openness” (one of the Big 5 personality traits)
- Read about how openness can help you see the world differently
- Read David Byrne’s How Music Works
- Listen to music outside of your normal playlist
- Dig into more research on music and cognition
- Listen to “happy” music to promote divergent thinking (which leads to increased creativity)
- Explore social justice through music, a curriculum
- Improve your allyship
Referred to in this episode (in order of mention)
- Letter from David Byrne about American Utopia
- Listen to “Here” from American Utopia
- See American Utopia’s set and costumes
- Read about and watch Annie-B Parsons’ American Utopia choreography
- Your brain on music
- Your brain listening to different genres of music
- Grooviness of music
- What is embodied cognition?
- What is embodied cognition to music?
- American Utopia’s partnership with Headcount
- Watch Janelle Monae’s official music video for “Hell You Talmbout”
- Your brain choreographed movement vs improvised movement
- Watch this video debunking the MYTH: “Humans use 10 percent of our brains.”
- What is pruning in the brain?
- Babies learning language
- What is synesthesia?
- Research by Berit Brogaard to unlock more of brain’s potential
- The truth about left brain vs. right brain
- What is dadaism?
- Listen to “I Zimbra” from American Utopia
- David Byrne Talks Being a Good Ally and American Utopia
- How making music can promote brain plasticity
About Our Guests:
Ruthie Fierberg, Host
IG: @whywetheater / T: @whywetheater
IG: @ruthiefierceberg / T: @RuthiesATrain
Tendayi Kuumba, Performer
A Spelman College 2010 graduate. She creates original performance work as UFLYMOTHERSHIP with Greg Purnell. Former touring member of Urban Bush Women, she’s a recipient of the third Bloodlines (future) commissioning program by the Stephen Petronio Company and will debut new UFLYMOTHERSHIP work for Fall ’22. @whostendayi
Dr. Vinoo Alluri PhD, musicologist and neuroscientist
Dr. Vinoo Alluri is an Assistant Professor at the Cognitive Science Lab at the International Institute of Information Technology-Hyderabad, India. She has a background in Electronics and Communication Engineering, after which she pursued a Masters in Music Engineering Technology at the University of Miami, and a Ph.D. in Musicology from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her work is highly interdisciplinary involving music psychology, music information retrieval, and neuroscience. She also has some formal training in the violin and piano. Currently she is working on projects that examine music listening habits on online streaming platforms and social media in relation to depression. In addition she is also working on determining how the brain processes musical features at varying levels of abstraction and how this depends on musical exposure, implicit learning, and enculturation.
Dr. Alejandro Lleras PhD, psychologist
Alejandro Lleras is a Colombian-American cognitive psychologist, with a Ph.D. from PennState. He is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a CAREER award recipient from the National Science Foundation. His work encompasses many subjects from visual awareness to problem solving and embodied cognition; from attention and distraction to the negative mental health effects of problematic internet/smartphone use; as well as other topics like time perception and the illusion of control. He is a founder member of the SPARK society, an non-for-profit organization aimed at increasing the participation and visibility of scholars belonging to historically-marginalized groups in the cognitive sciences. @alejolleras
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