Afrosonic Life

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)