Sonic vibrations
This guest edition is a multimedia journey into the sonic vibrations of sound system culture, lovers rock and dub with writers, visual artists and choreographers from the African diaspora.
Edited by: Michael McMillan
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Sonic vibrations: who can’t hear must feel
Michael McMillan
“In re-performing recorded music, the sound system calls and the crowd ‘massive’ responds on the dancefloor with their hands and lighters in the air as if they just don’t care.“
Michael McMillan celebrates the vibrancy of the sound system, an often overlooked area of Black British and diasporic culture.
Sound vibration
Khadijah Ibrahiim
“Amplify
Jah Shaka - Wasiffa - Maverick
deep dub-tion waves
moving cool n deadly, wid
top notch riddims /turn table precision
coin weight needle
on liquid vinyl crisp n crackle of ‘Culture dubplate
‘wat a liiv an bamba yeah’"
'Sound vibration', a poem by Leeds poet Khadijah Ibrahiim.Jah Shaka - Wasiffa - Maverick
deep dub-tion waves
moving cool n deadly, wid
top notch riddims /turn table precision
coin weight needle
on liquid vinyl crisp n crackle of ‘Culture dubplate
‘wat a liiv an bamba yeah’"
Natal
Courttia Newland
“Music like elemental force, heard and felt throughout the body, steaming clouds of curry goat, ganja, the barely heard cries of running children, our age and younger.”
Novelist Courttia Newland on his childhood memories of very special nights out with his parents.
Dr Satan’s Echo Chamber
Louis Chude-Sokei and Michael McMillan
“Well, the fact of technology – especially if you don’t have direct access to it – signifies ‘the future’. It is a metaphor – of development, of power, of perhaps ‘the West’, but certainly of a network of ideas that those on the margins crave access to or wish to echo or version.”
A conversation between Michael McMillan and Louis Chude-Sokei, author of The Last Darky: Bert Williams and Black on Black Minstrelsy.
Dubmorphology
Gary Stewart and Trevor Mathison
“I have the right to be impressed by the babbling brooks, the crackle of the flame, to feel excited about the possibility of sounds being turned into a key that unlocks somebody’s memory or an emotional journey.”
A conversation with Gary Stewart and Trevor Mathison of 'Dubmorphology', a London-based interdisciplinary research, art, live cinema and performance group.
Sista Culcha
Donna Moore
“When my son began to DJ, I told him to play for the women, because where women go, the men will follow. With my background in ballet, watching James Brown, Michael Jackson, and being a soul-head, I could beat many of the guys in a skanking competition.”
Donna Moore looks back at her life in music, as a selector for established all-female sound system Sista Culcha.
Dancing identity in a strange land
H Patten
“…pelvises moving as one, scribing a full circle for the ‘round di worl’ dance. Other pelvises scribe a figure of eight, moving in and out of each other, whilst some merely rock hips in semi-circular fashion, maintaining constant contact, their movement barely visible to onlookers.”
An exploration of the creation of Black 'countercultural spaces' and alternative spaces within which Black bodies perform in Britain.
The Vox
Franklyn Rodgers
"The rest of the week this subterranean club was something else that didn’t seem to matter, but Sunday evenings religiously belonged to a musical ascension. That was the Aquarium at The Vox."
Photographer Franklyn Rodgers' documentary photos from the subterranean club Aquarium at The Vox (1992-1994) Brighton Terrace, Brixton.
Sonic vibrations: Sense mek before book
Michael McMillan
“Dubpoetry emerged at a moment of radical Black activism which in Britain was expressed in a cultural renaissance.”
Dub poetry and sound system in the Black British literary imagination.Sistas in sound
Sonia Boyce
“And it’s only when we have a conversation like this, where it gets named, that erasure becomes disruptive, and without intervention it continues as a norm, as a replication of a power structure that we live in.”
The absence of women's voices in sound system culture with Sonia Boyce, Yassmin Foster, Carol Leeming, Denise Noble, and Lisa Palmer.