Overview

Black Soundscapes White Stages explores the role of sound in understanding the African Diaspora on both sides of the Atlantic, from the City of Light to the islands of the French Antilles. From the writings of European travelers in the seventeenth century to short-wave radio transmissions in the early twentieth century, Edwin C. Hill Jr. uses music, folk song, film, and poetry to listen for the tragic cri negre. Building a conceptualization of black Atlantic sound inspired by Frantz Fanon's pioneering work on colonial speech and desire, Hill contends that sound constitutes a terrain of contestation, both violent and pleasurable, where colonial and anti-colonial ideas about race and gender are critically imagined, inscribed, explored, and resisted. In the process, this book explores the dreams and realizations of black diasporic mobility and separation as represented by some of its most powerful soundtexts and cultural practitioners, and it poses questions about their legacies for us today. In the process, thee dreams and realities of Black Atlantic mobility and separation as represented by some of its most powerful soundtexts and cultural practitioners, such as the poetry of Leon-Gontran Damas-a founder of the Negritude movement-and Josephine Baker's performance in the 1935 film Princesse Tam Tam. As the first in Johns Hopkins' new series on the African Diaspora, this book offers new insight into the legacies of these exceptional artists and their global influence.

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9781421410593

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Reviews

Black Soundscapes White Stages is an original project that successfully invites readers to lend their ears to the sounds of the Francophone Black Atlantic. It approaches its subject matter from a wide, multidisciplinary perspective... Hill's focus on sound brings up exciting questions on Negritude voices, on the place of colonial female performers, and a variety of other transatlantic soundtexts. It is a safe bet that many scholars will listen in turn. -- Olivier Bourderionnet Contemporary French Civilization

Author Information

Edwin C. Hill Jr. is an assistant professor of French and comparative literature at the University of Southern California.

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