Eric Fillion

Eric Fillion is adjunct professor and Buchanan postdoctoral fellow in the Department of History at Queen’s University. His research explores the social and symbolic importance of music, within countercultures and in Canadian international relations. His ongoing work on cultural diplomacy and Canadian-Brazilian relations builds on the experience he has acquired as a musician. It also informs his current research on the postwar Canadian cultural public sphere: his two main projects examine the emergence of the music festival phenomenon in Canada and the entangled sonic histories of diasporic social movements. An affiliate of the Cultural Studies program and the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative (NACDI), Eric Fillion is the founder of the Tenzier archival record label (tenzier.org) and co-editor of the journal Critical Studies in Improvisation. He is the author of JAZZ LIBRE et la révolution québécoise: Musique-action, 1967-1975 and Distant Stage: Quebec, Brazil, and the Making of Canada’s Cultural Diplomacy. His latest book, Statesman of the Piano: Jazz, Race, and History in the Life of Lou Hooper (coedited with Sean Mills and Désirée Rochat), is now available through McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Eric Fillion was project codirector (with Ajay Heble, University of Guelph) of Curating for Change: The Work that Music Festivals Do in the World, a two-part online conference on music festivals as resonant – even if at times contested – sites of activism, equity, environmental stewardship, and community-building. Held in August and October 2022, the event brought together scholars, practitioners, artists, organizers, and patrons in the realm of music-making to reflect on the work that independent, artist-run, or boutique music festivals do in promoting vital forms of activist arts-based practices and pedagogies.