Podcast Season 1, Episode 6 – The Sound of Music: Art and Ritual with Dr. Carolyn M. Laferrière

On this episode of the Peopling the Past Podcast, we hear from Dr. Carolyn M. Laferrière, who you’ll recognize as a co-host of this podcast. Here, she discusses the role of music, art and religious ritual in the context of the Vari Cave, and the ways in which we can use the framework of sensoryscapes to understand how ancient peoples would have experienced this sacred space.

Dr. Laferrière is a Postdoctoral Scholar and Teaching Fellow at the University of Southern California’s Center for the Premodern World. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Associate with Archaia, Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Program for the Study of the Ancient World, as well as a Lecturer in the Departments of the History of Art and Classics.

Looking for additional research on these topics? Check out these articles by Dr. Laferrière:

Sacred Sounds: The Cult of Pan and the Nymphs in the Vari Cave” Classical Antiquity (2019) 38 (2): 185–216.

“Hermes Among Pan and the Nymphs on Fourth-Century Votive Reliefs.” In Tracking Hermes, Pursuing Mercury. Edited by Jenny Strauss Clay and John Miller. 31-48. Oxford University Press, 2019.

“Painting with Music: Visualizing ‘harmonia’ in Late Archaic Representations of Apollo Kitharoidos.” Greek and Roman Musical Studies 8.1 (2020): 63-90.

Dr. Laferrière’s exhibition, Sights and Sounds of Ancient Ritual, at the Yale University Art Gallery and its review in the Wall Street Journal.

Looking for a transcript of this episode? Click here.
Additional Resources for this Episode

Ancient Music: 

Good introductory resource for ancient music: https://books.google.com/books/about/Companion_to_Ancient_Greek_and_Roman_Mus.html?id=BneezAEACAAJ 

Musical concert at the 2018 annual MOISA conference, held in Reading, UK. Performed by Stef Conner and Barnaby Brown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsIZznIKQgM 

Vari Cave: 

Pleiades link: https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/580056/?searchterm=vari%20cave* 

Experiencing the Ancient World:

Don Delillo, The Names: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/39031/the-names-by-don-delillo/

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