James Nichols is earning a PhD in American History and listening to the radio.
I like ensembles, aggregates, and conjuntos, especially when they play together and just
make things up, pulling it out of the ethereal. Other than that, I'm a graduate student,
amateur writer, and adjunct faculty traveling itinerantly around Queens and beyond, along
the “made by Moses” circuits and crisscrossings that gut the megalopolis. Whenever I get
a
chance I stop by to see what sort of thing they're doing on the Lower East Side or in
Brooklyn. I also travel a bit: to Eastern Europe with my Hungarian wife and, for all of next
year, to Mexico.
I am an aspiring academic but like to sometimes take a break with AAJ and write more
prosaically. My dissertation is in history and illuminates how American slavery
helped make meaningful an always mercurial border between Mexico and the United
States. And it's got alot to do with freeing the race. I'd like to think my approach has been
influenced by listening to jazz
and other
sorts of folk musics--of both the uptown and downhome varieties. No story can be told if
we don't know anything about the soundtrack, righ? Come this September, I will be
teasing
roots out of a greater “America”: I travel to Mexico City and then to the Northern frontier
on a
research fellowship from the Social Science Research Council. Does freedom travel? And
can it be translated into (Latin) American vernaculars? Stay tuned...
I 've also been known to play piano a bit. I like the adventurous stuff. And I really only
listen to jazz on vinyl.
