The exhibition Drum Listens to Heart explores some of the ways percussion reaches beyond the field of music and relates to aesthetic and political forms more broadly. In this lecture, the Canadian scholar Daniel Akira Stadnicki discusses the phenomenon of percussive protest in contemporary North American politics. His focus is on collective percussive practices at multiple Occupy sites, as well as les casseroles during the Quebec ‘Maple Spring’ in 2012. Rather than provide a chronology and cultural history of these practices, he unpacks how  percussion is often talked about, analyzed, experienced, and utilized for political ends.

Daniel Akira Stadnicki is an award-winning scholar, performer, and popular music educator currently based in amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta). He has lectured and published widely on a range of topics related to percussion, including for The Cambridge Companion to the Drum Kit, The Journal of Popular Music Education, and The Drummer’s Journal, in addition to co-organizing the first International Drum Kit Conference at Boston University (September 9-10, 2022).