Not all stories begin with grand achievements or extraordinary inventions. Often, what sustains the world —and music— are microhistories: lives that do not seek glory but, in their encounters with others, quietly reshape sonic landscapes. This talk turns to one such story: that of Patricia Reyes, La Pilla, a Mexican pianist who has traced her path across jazz, free improvisation, popular music, hip-hop, salsa, and sound art.
Drawing on her experience as a queer woman in the Mexican jazz scene, I reflect on how a musical persona is performed and developed; on the networks and infrastructures that both enable and constrain access; on the tension between intimate creation and the relentless demands of digital platforms; on what it means to age as a musician; and on inhabiting dissidence within a field marked by the norms of gender, style, and market.
Rather than presenting a linear biographical portrait, this talk invites us to look toward the margins, where music is sustained through small, persistent gestures, and where forgotten stories teach us alternative ways of understanding what it means to make music: microhistories of struggle on a journey toward a queer Mexican utopia.
Juan Bermúdez is a Mexican ethnomusicologist based in Austria. Bermúdez pursued advanced music studies at the University of Sciences and Arts of Chiapas and ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz. He earned his doctorate in ethnomusicology from the University of Vienna, under the supervision of Julio Mendívil, with an ethnography on musical practices on the smartphone application TikTok. This research received the Dissertationspreis from the Department of Musicology at the University of Vienna and an Honorable Mention in the Outstanding Dissertation Award of the International Musicological Society.
Bermúdez is the author and editor of several books, including Echoes of the Past: The Marimba Sencilla in Chiapas(Praesens, 2021), which received the "Investigaciones" award from the Austrian Association for Latin American Studies; TikTok-Music-Cultures (MusAu, 2025); and Musicking TikTok: A Musical Ethnography from a Glocal Austrian Context (Bloomsbury, 2025). His academic career has been supported by prestigious grants, including the APART-GSK and Post-Doc-Track programs of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, as well as the Uni:Docs Fellowship from the University of Vienna.
Currently, he is a Senior Scientist at the Institute for Ethnomusicology at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, and in 2025, he will serve as a Visiting Professor at the Cologne University of Music and Dance. His current research focuses on musical performances in multimedia contexts, with a special emphasis on Queer Mexicanism.
LOCATION:Davison Room, Loeb Music Library STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20260331T191500Z DTEND:20260331T200000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR