Happy Holidays!
We’ve had a busy fall here at the Black Sound Lab, and we’re excited to be able to share some of the highlights with you. As always, our mission is to amplify Black life and decriminalize Black sound, largely through digital practice.
Stagville
On November 15, BSL was invited to participate in the opening of artist Maya Freelon’s exhibition “Whippersnappers” at the historic Stagville Plantation in North Carolina. The Stagville Plantation was one of the largest in North Carolina, and was home to over 900 enslaved people. The Whippersnappers exhibition is dedicated to “recapturing, reviewing, and reimagining the lives of enslaved children in the United States.” Maya Freelon and BSL director Allie Martin are both artists in residence at the Library of Congress, and BSL presented a motion activated sound installation in the Great Barn for the opening of Whippersnappers, a space built by the enslaved. The installation turned the barn into an instrument that could be played, inviting participants to experience the sounds of ancestors, environments, and children’s games led by jazz singer Nnenna Freelon. Maya’s exhibition, Whippersnappers, is up at Stagville until January 2025. If you’re in the area you should check it out!
Name That Run
On November 9, we held the second iteration of our game show “Name That Run,” the game show about melisma you didn’t know you needed! Melismas, or vocal runs, feature many notes sung on one syllable of a word, and are found throughout contemporary popular music. Name That Run teaches audience members about melismas while challenging contestants with questions about artists, songs, vocal challenges, and more. This year, the show featured celebrity contestants Thembisa Mshaka and Craig Seymour, both industry veterans who gave our audience behind the scenes knowledge about their favorite R&B singers. Name That Run is the public engagement component of “Modeling Melisma,” a BSL research project that seeks to formalize the study of Black melismatic singing. BSL’s melisma research is led by the one and only Richel Cuyler ☺️
Intersectional Listening
Happy to report that our Director Allie Martin’s book is now available for pre-order here! Intersectional Listening: Gentrification and Black Sonic Life in Washington, DC asks the question, what does gentrification sound like to Black people in DC? Drawing from music, interviews, soundscape recordings, and more, Allie argues that gentrification ultimately serves to silence some voices and amplify others. Coming Feb 2025 from Oxford University Press!
Happy Holidays and we’ll see you all in the new year with exciting projects both on and off campus!
