In Conversation with Professor Paloma Checa-Gismero

By Neria Spence //

Professor Paloma-Checa Gismero teaches global contemporary art, focusing on the history of North Atlantic visual culture through a transnational lens grounded in past and present relations of coloniality. She graciously gave Orpheus Review a bit of her time to discuss Pulp, Victoria Beckham (née Adams), and all other music she is into. 

The below transcript was edited and condensed for clarity.

Neria Spence: Thank you so much for being open and doing this. Orpheus Review is the online music publication for Swarthmore, so we really like to talk to people about what music they’re into. We want to learn more about professors and, honestly, just all people who are in this space to get more insight into what people are really listening to, what people like. So I just have a few questions for you. The first being, do you have any specific songs or artists that really resonate with your college years or anything that reminds you of that time?

Paloma Checa-Gismero: A little throwback. Yes, the album Different Class by Pulp. 

NS: Oh, I love Pulp, yeah. 

PCG: So the album Different Class by Pulp, which came out way before I went to college, about a decade before. But I couldn’t stop listening to it on my drives back and forth to college and you know, those years. And I know all of their songs by heart. And I also just went to see Pulp.

NS: Really?

PCG: In Philly and they were amazing.

NS: Did they perform a lot of songs off of that album? 

PCG: Yeah, they did. And they also performed new songs, which were also really great.

NS: Yeah. One of my family friends, he’s like the biggest Pulp fan I’ve ever met. And I was introduced to Pulp through him because he’d play it all the time when I was younger. And my friends and I love the song “Babies.” That song is just it, we love dancing to that song.

PCG: It’s a great song.

NS: Do you have any specific songs off that album that are meaningful to you? I mean, you said you liked all of them. 

PCG: I like the more well-known ones that are really fun, but I really like “Something Changed.” I know it’s very cheesy, but it’s a beautiful love song. And I still get like, ooh, shivers when I hear it. 

NS: Have you felt like your music taste has changed a lot since then? Or do you feel that you still listen to the same artists? 

PCG: Yeah, well, it’s been 20 years since college for me. And yes, it’s changed a lot. I still like those bands a lot. But since then, I’ve become way more into electronic music and more contemporary Latin American music. I like cumbia a lot, but more like electronic cumbia stuff. And also, since then, I moved to the US and I’ve also got introduced to musical forms from the US that had not made it to Europe, which many do make it to Europe, you know, globalization and colonialism, but some hadn’t.

NS: What kind of music is that? Like, are there any artists?

PCG: So, US hip hop culture and rap had made it but not as much as, of course, as here. And so I’ve learned way more about it and become way more, you know, like knowledgeable and familiar with it and have also gotten to enjoy it way more since I moved to the US.

NS: Are there any artists that come to mind when you think about hip hop and rap that you like? 

PCG: Yeah. Well, I was very sad to hear that D’Angelo passed away yesterday or two days ago. So he’s sort of like a more soul version of that, but I have definitely gotten to appreciate him a lot. And also I love the song “California Knows How to Party.”

NS [laughing]: Okay, yeah. I like that song too. 

PCG: Yeah, it’s a great song. And you know it’s not gonna make it to the level of the best songs ever, but it really still does it for me. 

NS: Yeah, that’s really fair. I mean, I think I can claim a little bit of pride in that song, you know, California pride, because everyone likes to talk about how great their other cities are. But you know ultimately, California knows how to party. 

PCG: And that was Tupac, right?

NS: I think it was Dr. Dre. Was it Tupac?

PCG: Yeah, Dr. Dre. Yeah.

NS: Yeah, but it was within that whole group.

PCG: Yeah, certainly.

NS: On a little bit of a different note: do you see any intersection between your academic and perhaps artistic interests and the kind of music you listen to? How do they inform each other?

PCG: Hmm, perhaps. When I was writing my book, I got to listen to a lot of music from the places that I was writing about. So I got to listen to a lot of music from Cuba in the 1980s, and also Tijuana in the 1990s, which was really interesting. Also, like electro rock from Tijuana in San Diego. And then also, I got to listen a lot, again, to Moby’s Everything is Wrong album, which was popular in Europe at the time of one of my case studies. And one of the artworks that I write about, actually, the cover of my book is named after that album.

NS: Oh, wow. Okay.

PCG: That was a really big hit in the rave scene in the 1990s. So in some ways, yes, because I like to activate my writing to the period that I’m looking at. But, I also like a lot of classical jazz and jazz from the 50s and 60s. More like psychedelic music from the 70s that has nothing to do with my research, or maybe more like the emancipatory politics of it does.

NS: Do you listen to music when you write or when you’re doing work?

PCG: I used to, but not anymore. I prefer writing in silence just on my own.

NS: What are the settings that you’re listening to music in? Like, do you just sit down and listen to an album? Or is it when you’re out? How do you engage with music these days?

PCG: Well, let’s see, I love going on walks and listening to music. I also love just to play music on a weekend morning at home. I like to dance with my toddler. I have a one-year old and so we dance a lot to Nina Simone or contemporary Spanish folk. Then when I’m driving, not so much because I don’t have a USB player or some digital key from my car. I have a really old car. And I can’t listen to the radio these days. 

NS: Is there any music that your toddler’s more drawn to? Are there any things that they like?

PCG: Hmm. We play her a lot of electronic and she likes to dance. Yeah, we just play her what we listen to. We don’t play kids’ music. 

NS: I think any music can be kid music, honestly, especially electronic. It feels very accessible for a younger mind. On a different note, if you had to choose one album or artist to design a course around who would it be?

PCG: Oh, that is a question that I had not anticipated. Well, I think Different Class could be a good album to design a course on the young British artist generation that came to fame in the 1990s. All of them like Damien Hirst and what’s her name?

NS: Maybe like Tracey Emin?

PCG: Yeah, all of that like Tracey Emin, Anya Gallacio, all of that really interesting generation of artists who did come from sort of like the same spaces. They all went to St. Martin’s or not, but like, that sort of working class background really made it into the Saatchi Gallery scene and then kind of bolted into the global scene. So that could be a fun album to trace, like track back into those case studies.

NS: Did Jarvis Cocker come from a working class background? I don’t know that much about him.

PCG: I imagine. And you know that he wrote the song, the “Common People” song is about this woman who later married Yanis Varoufakis, who is Greece’s, or was Greece Minister of Economy around 10 years ago, and he’s a hardcore socialist. And so it’s interesting to see, she’s critiqued as being this elite, wealthy Greek person. And now she’s married to a really big name in European politics.

NS: That’s really interesting, I did not know that. It’s so interesting to learn about all the people that were in that scene that are being referenced. I feel like all the Pulp songs are so laden with references, that it’s such a fun activity to figure out what it’s all talking about.

PCG: Yeah, and it must have been an amazing place, London in the 90s. That’s sort of like the underground music and art scene. 

NS: Yeah, because they had all that going on. They had like, you’re talking about the raves, like they had the jungle, all of that, it’s incredible. Again a bit of a different topic, but if you could host a dinner with three musicians living or dead, who would you invite?

PCG: Oh, yeah. I think I would invite, let’s see. I would invite Prince. I would invite… Oh, I have to think about that. I would invite John Lennon. Okay. And I would invite, this is probably not the right thing for me to say, but I’m not choosing them because of their music. I’m choosing them because of their, you know, what I think could be fun personalities to put together. I would also invite Victoria Adams. She’s the posh Spice Girl. 

NS [laughing]: Oh, okay.

PCG: Also known as Victoria Beckham.

NS: Oh, my god, okay. I’ve never heard her referred to as “Adams,” because I feel like people don’t really reference her by her maiden name. Oh, that would be a really interesting group. How do you think they would get along, if at all?

PCG: Yeah, I don’t know. I think Prince would be a very difficult person to get along with. And also John Lennon probably had a big, really big ego. And I’m not sure Victoria Adams would eat, but maybe she would. 

NS: Yeah, that might be one of the issues, actually. What meal do you think you would serve all of these people? I feel like they have very different tastes.

PCG: Yeah, I would serve gazpacho with lots of garlic. And then maybe so just to see how different people respond to garlic and also a Mediterranean food, a Spanish meat. And then I’d serve cheesecake because it’s sort of like a classic piece. I can’t go wrong with it.

NS: That would be so interesting. Wow, I’d love to just observe that.

PCG [laughing]: You can come to the dinner.

NS: Oh, thank you. Yeah, that was just me trying to invite myself. Okay, in terms of your life right now, what song would you choose as a theme for this moment?

PCG: Let me go into my current playlist to see if there’s anything that speaks to me.

NS: What is your approach to making playlists? Like, do you make them often?

PCG: I just make a playlist per year. 

NS: Oh, so how long are they?

PCG: Long! There is just one for 2025, and I’ve been doing it for a while. So I just add things that I like, and they often don’t have anything to do with each other. Let’s see. There’s a song I like a lot. It doesn’t describe my life, but it really gets me, you know, energized when I hear it. It’s called “Los Angeles,” like the city, by Ms. Nina and Erancy Music.

NS: Ooh, I have not heard it, I am excited to listen. How did you learn of the song?

PCG: I was listening to some like feminist cumbia for a while, sort of like feminist lesbian cumbia and this came on in the mix.

NS: Do you feel like you usually learn of new songs or new music through other artists you listen to a lot?

PCG: Either that or through friends or my partner, or sometimes students recommend something. When I was in California, I listened to KCRW a lot. And that would keep me awake and I would learn new music. 

NS: Yeah, KCRW is so awesome. I’m a big fan, famously, of radio.

PCG: Yeah, certainly.

NS: So, this is the last question I have for you. What’s a song or artist you secretly love that might surprise your students?

PCG: I love the Spice Girls. 

NS: Okay, yeah.

PCG: And Britney. Britney Spears. I think she’s got some really good stuff. 

[On further reflection, Professor Checa-Gismero insisted that Brian Eno be added to her musician dinner party.]