
Afrosonic Life
Mark V. Campbell(Author)
Bloomsbury Academic USA (Publisher)
Published on 24. August 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
160 pages
978-1-5013-7933-8 (ISBN)
Description
Afrosonic Life explores the role sonic innovations in the African diaspora play in articulating methodologies for living the afterlife of slavery. Developing and extending debates on Afrosonic cultures, the book attends to the ways in which the acts of technological subversion, experimentation and production complement and interrupt the intellectual project of modernity. Music making processes such as dub, turntablism, hip-hop dj techniques and the remix, innovate methods of expressing subjecthoods beyond the dominant language of Western "Man" and the market. These sonic innovations utilize sound as a methodology to institute a rehumanizing subjectivity in which sound dislodges the hierarchical ordering of racial schemas. Afrosonic Life is invested in excavating and elaborating the nuanced and novel ways of music making and sound creation found in the African diaspora.
Reviews / Votes
Gathering myriad sonic worlds, suturing musical activity to black life, detailing the beauty of diasporic invention, Mark V. Campbell's Afrosonic Life theorizes black humanity as the practice of making, absorbing, living with, hyping, reworking, interrupting, remixing, turning, and breaking apart sound technologies. This book illuminates how black creativity is a constant reworking of who and what we are-collectively-by centering collaboration, sharing, and the lure of sonic attachments. -- Katherine McKittrick, Professor of Gender Studies at Queen's University, Ontario, Canada, and author of Dear Science and Other Stories (2020). Forgoing the hymns of obduracy, but not avoiding the traumas of the shipped, Mark V Campbell invites us to celebrate the phenomena of Black sonic genius. His deft articulation of DJ culture is more than commendable. From king Tubby to Dilla he unfolds a myriad of groundbreaking techniques pioneered by celebrated producers of many ilks in the transnational African diaspora. Afrosonic Life theoretically explains Black radicalism from a plethora of varied sonic spectrums. Campbell eruditely displays why innovative Black music constantly evolves into new dimensions of poetic dare and spectacular disrupt, enabling Black Joy to function in syncopated communal kinaesthetic antiphonies. -- Satch Hoyt, artist, Afro-sonic Mapping, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin, Germany With Afrosonic Life, Mark V. Campbell offers an illuminating expose of African ancestral creativities expressed through turntablism, dub, and remixing as resistant responses to the intersectional forces of dehumanization and commodification typically imposed upon Black artists and their works. Campbell has penned a poignant testament to the resilient artistic ingenuity summoned by Black DJs and dub artists as they challenge hierarchical market structures that are created and protected by Western hegemonies of thought and commerce such as individual rights and intellectual property ownership. Campbell masterfully explains the connection between the traditions of oral storytelling and musical improvisation to the contemporary principles of artistic agency and the reconstitution of Black bodies; artist and audience. -- Marcus X. Thomas, Associate Professor of Music, The Hartt School, University of Hartford, USA, co-author of The Commercial Music Industry in Atlanta and the State of Georgia - An Economic Impact Study (2003)More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-5013-7933-8 (9781501379338)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Mark V. Campbell
Afrosonic Life
E-Book
02/2022
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic USA
€33.99
Available for download

Mark V. Campbell
Afrosonic Life
E-Book
02/2022
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic USA
€33.99
Available for download
Person
Mark V. Campbell is Assistant Professor of Music and Culture at University of Toronto, Canada. His research explores the relationships between Afrosonic innovations and notions of the human. He is founding director of the Afrosonic Innovation Lab and co-editor of Hip Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production (2023) and We Still Here: Hip Hop North of the 49th Parallel (2020).
Author
Assistant Professor of Music and CultureUniversity of Toronto
Content
Introduction
1. Soundman/Sound System (S.W. rmx)
2. Turning the Tables
3. Riddim Science: On Living Hip-Hop's Sonic Innovations
4. Dubbing the Remix and Its Uses
Conclusion: Come Rewind: We were the 1st Robots
Bibliography
Index
1. Soundman/Sound System (S.W. rmx)
2. Turning the Tables
3. Riddim Science: On Living Hip-Hop's Sonic Innovations
4. Dubbing the Remix and Its Uses
Conclusion: Come Rewind: We were the 1st Robots
Bibliography
Index