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“Everyone I listen to, fake patois. . .”
It may seem a little crazy to take Das Racist seriously. Their songs are deep in the realm of the ridiculous, but I can’t help but feel that “Combination Pizza Hut/Taco Bell” is a commentary on how the...
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Could I Be Chicana Without Carlos Santana?
Carlos Santana by Flickr User Momez This may be a given but I have to ask: Why is the music of Carlos Santana considered “Chicano music?” It’s true; I am a fan. And as a fan I never question why I love...
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On the Lower Frequencies: Norman Corwin, Colorblindness, and the “Golden Age”...
Editor’s Note: This is Liana, Managing Editor for Sounding Out!, introducing you to this special fall installment of our series “Tune Into the Past,” penned by our very own Editor-in-Chief and Guest...
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Thrills, Chills, and Safe Sexuality: The Sounds of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”
Next month may mark the 30th Anniversary of the release of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, but chances are that if you are going to a Halloween dance party this year –or have since 1982–the musical...
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Something’s Got a Hold on Me: ‘Lingering Whispers’ of the Atlantic Slave...
Interior of Men’s Slave Cells – Cape Coast Castle – Ghana, Image by Flickr User Adam Jones, PhD I am standing in the mouth of the female dungeon. I hesitate to breathe for fear the hole will swallow...
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I Like the Way You Rhyme, Boy: Hip Hop Sensibility and Racial Trauma in...
Welcome to week two of our February Forum on “Sonic Borders,” a collaboration with the IASPM-US blog in connection with this year’s IASPM-US conference on Liminality and Borderlands, held in Austin,...
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The Sounds of Anti-Anti-Essentialism: Listening to Black Consciousness in the...
Image by Flickr User Pere Ubu In teaching the many interrelated and complicated aspects of the Civil Rights movement, Black Power, and the Black Arts Movement, the challenge for me is to help students...
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Sonic Brownface: Representations of Mexicanness in an Era of Discontent
Image by Flickr User Thomas Hawk In the current anti-immigrant climate, the visual, sonic, and textual modes of representation are becoming battlegrounds we must consider. Arizona, Georgia, and...
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Pretty, Fast, and Loud: The Audible Ali
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand NOW. . .in SO!‘s corner. . .writing for this month’s “Sound and Sport,” we have the scholar. . .the poet . . .the “Wordsmith of the Web” Taaaaaaaaaara Betts! In today’s post, she...
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To Sir, With Ratchety Love: Listening to the (Dis)Respectability Politics of...
Editor’s Note: July 18th, 2013 has been designated as World Listening Day by the World Listening Project, a nonprofit organization founded in 2008 “devoted to understanding the world and its natural...
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Hello, Americans: Orson Welles, Latin America, and the Sounds of the “Good...
And now, we interrupt this broadcast for a message from Guest Editor Neil Verma: At 9:00 pm on July 11, 1938, the Columbia Broadcasting System unfurled a plush Tchaikovsky concerto to welcome 23...
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The Noisiest City on Earth? or, What Can the 2012 Manhattan Noise Complaint...
“It’s a city, not a cemetery. You can’t tell everybody to go around wearing earplugs.” Ex-New York City Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern, quoted in “Many Pleas for Quiet, but City Still Thunders” In...
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Sound Off! // Comment Klatsch #10: Sonic Black- and Brown- Face
klatsch \KLAHCH\ , noun: A casual gathering of people, esp. for refreshments and informal conversation [German Klatsch, from klatschen, to gossip, make a sharp noise, of imitative origin.]...
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Fade to Black, Old Sport: How Hip Hop Amplifies Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby
When I heard of people flocking to recreate “Gatsby Dress” costumes for Halloween 2013, I couldn’t help but ponder the seemingly-perpetual cultural allure of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby,...
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Sound at ASA 2013
Although this year’s American Studies Association conference location is not as warm and sunny as last year’s (can we have all November conferences in warm, sunny places, please?), Washington DC has a...
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The Acoustics of Passing: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin as...
Editor’s Note: Sound Studies is often accused of being a presentist enterprise, too fascinated with digital technologies and altogether too wed to the history of sound recording. Sounding Out!‘s last...
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From the Archive #2: Miss Lena Horne (1917-2010) Takes on Radio
In a Chicago Defender interview from the late 1940s, badass even then: “‘Almost every day, I hear someone on the radio hailing America as the home of democracy. Yet almost every network is guilty of...
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And you will know us by the sound of vuvuzelas
Despite some stunning matchups, the news story of the 2010 World Cup has undoubtedly been the vuvuzela. While there have been valiant efforts to the contrary (see Jennifer Doyle’s article in The...
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How Many Mics Do We Rip on the Daily?
A woman’s voice to this game right now is so extremely necessary in order to save it.–MC Lyte, My Mic Sounds Nice: A Truth About Women in Hip-Hop On Monday August 30th, BET premiered My Mic Sounds...
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Ill Communication: Hip Hop Studies & Sound Studies @ Show And Prove
“The engaged voice must never be fixed and absolute but always changing, always evolving in dialogue with a world beyond itself” –bell hooks, quoted by d. Sabela Grimes at Show and Prove, 9.18.10 This...
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