Dhanveer Singh Brar - Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski: The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century

Teklife / Ghettoville / Eski

Sonics Series

Atau Tanaka, editor

Sonic Agency: Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance, Brandon LaBelle

Meta Gesture Music: Embodied Interaction, New Instruments and Sonic Experience, Various Artists (CD and online)

Inflamed Invisible: Collected Writings on Art and Sound, 19762018, David Toop

Teklife / Ghettoville / Eski: The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century, Dhanveer Singh Brar

Goldsmiths Presss Sonics series considers sound as media and as material as physical phenomenon, social vector, or source of musical affect. The series maps the diversity of thinking across the sonic landscape, from sound studies to musical performance, from sound art to the sociology of music, from historical soundscapes to digital musicology. Its publications encompass books and extensions to traditional formats that might include audio, digital, online and interactive formats. We seek to publish leading figures as well as emerging voices, by commission or by proposal.

Teklife / Ghettoville / Eski

The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early Twenty-First Century

Dhanveer Singh Brar

Copyright 2021 Goldsmiths Press

First published in 2021 by Goldsmiths Press

Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross

London SE14 6NW

Printed and bound by Versa

Distribution by the MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England

Copyright 2021 Dhanveer Singh Brar

The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and review and certain non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN (hbk) 9781912685790

ISBN (ebk) 9781912685806

www.gold.ac.uk/goldsmiths-press

d_r0

Terry Greening
19392011

Harkamal Singh Hothi
19842016

Contents

There are lots of people to thank, all of whom took part in some way or other in the making of this thing.

The founding members of Black Study Group (London): Simon Barber, Victor Manuel Cruz, Ciaran Finlayson, Sam Fisher, Lucie Kim-Chi Mercier, Ashwani Sharma.

Philadelphians who took me under their musical wing: Rucyl Mills, Marlo Reynolds.

Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective: Stefano Harney, Louis Moreno, Fred Moten, Fumi Okiji, Paul Rekret, Ronald Rose-Antoinette.

Laura Harris for reading early versions of the Teklife chapter.

All sorts of people at the University of Pennsylvania: Kevin Connolly, Jennifer Conway, Hubert Cook, Jim English, Nicholas Gaskill, Clemmie Harris, Grace Sanders Johnson, Amber R. Reed, Gina Rivera, Oliver Rollins, Ruth E. Toulson, Sara Varney, Chi-Ming Yang, Alden Young.

Similarly at University College London: Tamar Garb, David (Jeeva) Jeevendrampillai, Stefanie Rauch, Alicia Spencer-Hall, Catherine Stokes, Andreas Wei.

For seeing a book before it was a book: Shana L. Redmond.

Atau Tanaka and Ellen Parnavelas at Goldsmiths Press.

The clan: Mohinder Kaur Brar, Harpawanjit Singh Brar, Arunveer Singh Brar.

Forever: Kezia Likinde Rolfe.