The Skin, the Masks, the Dreams, the Struggle: the Arts and Abolition

André de Quadros’s initial encounters with race was as the only Brown boy that many people saw in the Melbourne of the 1960s during the White Australia Policy. His work for more than a decade in brutal American prisons, where he worked with mostly Black and Brown folx have led to a clear understanding of race that crosses geographies, histories, genders, and sites. His talk dealt with the cruelty of racism and how his pedagogy illuminates and seeks to dismantle its harm.

Professor André de Quadros is a human rights activist, conductor, ethnomusicologist, music educator, and writer whose work has taken him to the most diverse settings in 40 countries including professional ensembles, projects with prisons, psychosocial rehabilitation, refugees, and victims of sexual violence, torture, and trauma. He focuses on race and mass incarceration, peacebuilding, forced migration, LGBTQ+, public health, and Islamic culture. He uses music for peacebuilding, reconciliation, and empowerment. Dr de Quadros directs three international choirs – in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the US. He also directs a peacebuilding project, Common Ground Voices (Israel, Palestine) and a forced migration project Common Ground Voices / La Frontera (Mexico-US border). Dr de Quadros is a professor of music at Boston University where he holds affiliate faculty positions in African, African American & Black Diaspora, American and New England, Asian, Jewish, and Muslim studies, as well as the Center for Antiracist Research, Center on Forced Displacement, and the Prison Education Program. His work with rival prison gangs and divided communities has served as a model for reconciliation work. In addition to hundreds of international workshops, seminars, and performances, he has numerous publications to his record, including ten books, several book chapters and articles, at least 50 choral editions, together with several research grants. He directs The Choral Commons, a justice-focused media platform, that produces podcasts, webinars, and creative work. In 2019, he held a distinguished position at the University of Cambridge.