Ill Communication: Hip Hop Studies & Sound Studies @ Show And Prove
“The engaged voice must never be fixed and absolute but always changing, always evolving in dialogue with a world beyond itself” –bell hooks, quoted by d. Sabela Grimes at Show and Prove, 9.18.10 DOI:...
View ArticleSO! Reads: Marisol Negrón’s Made in NuYoRico: Fania Records, Latin Music, and...
I began reading Marisol Negrón’s Made in NuYoRico: Fania Records, Latin Music, and Salsa’s Nuyorican Meanings (Duke University Press, 2024) in earnest this summer, as Bad Bunny’s “NUEVAYol” flooded...
View ArticleSO! Reads: Danielle Shlomit Sofer’s Sex Sounds: Vectors of Difference in...
Distance, therefore, preserves a European austerity in recorded musical practices, and electroacoustic practice is no exception; it is perhaps even responsible for reinvigorating a colonial posterity...
View Article“Just for a Few Hours, We Was Free”: The Blues and Mapping Freedom in Sinners...
In the 2025 blockbuster Sinners, Ryan Coogler has a vampire story to tell. But before he can begin, he needs to tell another story—a blues one. Sinners opens with a voiceover thesis statement...
View ArticleTechnologies of Communal Listening: Resonance at the Museum of Contemporary...
In both sound studies and the sonic arts, the concept of “resonance” has increasingly played a central role in attuning listeners to the politics of sound. The term itself is borrowed from acoustics,...
View ArticleRonca Realness: Voices that Sound the Sucia Body
This series listens to the political, gendered, queer(ed), racial engagements and class entanglements involved in proclaiming out loud: La-TIN-x. ChI-ca-NA. La-TI-ne. ChI-ca-n-@. Xi-can-x. Funded by...
View ArticleThe Sound of What Becomes Possible: Language Politics and Jesse Chun’s 술래...
“To this day I think about all the strange words I missed out on, all the losses I’m still carrying from faraway…I still think of the time when I spoke one language, and that language was whole.” Chun...
View ArticleListening in Plain Sight: The Enduring Influence of U.S. Air Guitar
The mention of “air guitar” might conjure images of the Bill and Ted series. Or Risky Business. Or maybe even Joe Cocker at Woodstock. You might think of air guitar as an embarrassing fan gesture. So...
View ArticleFlâneuse>La caminanta
Since its inception at the World Soundscape Project in the 1970s, soundwalking has emerged as a critical method for sound studies research and artistic practice. Although “soundwalking” now describes a...
View ArticleSO! Amplifies: The Blues and Jazz Dance Book Club
SO! Amplifies. . .a highly-curated, rolling mini-post series by which we editors hip you to cultural makers and organizations doing work we really really dig. You’re welcome! — Breaking down the...
View ArticleSO! Reads: Steph Ceraso’s Sounding Composition: Multimodal Pedagogies for...
Pedagogy at the convergence of sound studies and rhetoric/composition seems to exist in a quantum state—both everywhere and nowhere at the same time. This realization simultaneously enlightens and...
View ArticleCardi B: Bringing the Cold and Sexy to Hip Hop
In “Asesina,” Darell opens the track shouting “Everybody go to the discotek,” a call for listeners to respond to the catchy beat and come dance. In this series on rap in Spanish and Sound Studies,...
View ArticleFemmes Fucking the Camera: Listening to the Sonics of Boudoir Photography
Pictured above areRaven Von Scrumptious (right) an Sepia Jewel (left), two burlesque dancers from San Diego, California. Raven and Sepia started “eye fucking” in burlesque classes with Coco L’Amour and...
View Article“How Many Latinos are in this Motherfucking House?”: DJ Irene, Sonic...
How Many Latinos are in this Motherfucking House? –DJ Irene At the Arena Nightclub in Hollywood, California, the sounds of DJ Irene could be heard on any given Friday in the 1990s. Arena, a 4000-foot...
View ArticleSO! Reads: Kirstie Dorr’s On Site, In Sound: Performance Geographies in...
“World Music,” both as a concept and as a convenient marketing label for the global music industry, has received a fair deal of deserved criticism over the last two decades, from scholars and musicians...
View ArticleMy Time in the Bush of Drones: or, 24 Hours at Basilica Hudson
Ed. Note: We wanted to run this piece in advance of the Basilica Hudson’s SoundScape event taking place this Friday, September 14 – Sunday, September 16, 2018. Our Amplifying Du Bois at 150 forum will...
View ArticleGender and the First Sound Films in 1930s Bombay
co-edited by Praseeda Gopinath and Monika Mehta Our listening practices are discursively constructed. In the sonic landscape of India, in particular, the way in which we listen and what we hear is...
View Article“Don’t Be Afraid to Pogo!”: Chicana Hollywood Punks Negotiate ‘h/Home’ After...
For the full intro to the forum by Michelle Habell-Pallan, click here. For the first installment by Yessica Garcia Hernandez click here. For the second post by Susana Sepulveda click here. For the...
View ArticleSounding Out Tarima Temporalities: Decolonial Feminista Dance Disruption
For the full intro to the forum by Michelle Habell-Pallan, click here. For the first installment by Yessica Garcia Hernandez click here. For the second post by Susana Sepulveda click here. For last...
View Article“Oh how so East L.A.”: The Sound of 80s Flashbacks in Chicana Literature
For the full intro to the forum by Michelle Habell-Pallan, click here. For the first installment by Yessica Garcia Hernandez click here. For the second post by Susana Sepulveda click here. The...
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