*CFP* CALL FOR PARTICIPATION, SOUND SYSTEM OUTERNATIONAL #7 ONLINE

Sound System Outernational #7 online

in association with Sonic Street Technologies ERC research project: Sound Systems at the Crossroads

12-16 July 2021, 4pm to 6pm UK time (BST)

 

Sound systems are currently at a crossroads despite the unprecedented explosion of the form during the last decades. Sound system culture has gained increasing attention from cultural organisations, the music industry and researchers. But the pandemic has been accelerating trends in both positive and negative directions.

In a positive direction online formats have been encouraging a new inventiveness and creativity in formats and content. A whole new range of opportunities are in the process of opening up for both practitioners and audiences and SSO #7 is part of this process.

In a less positive direction we have all certainly been missing the in-body experience of the sessions that are at the beating heart of sound system culture. The lockdown has silenced the streets worldwide, freezing sound system activities and depriving practitioners and the wider community of their primary source of income.

Even before the pandemic, the increasingly restrictive legislation, the gentrification of cities, the closing down of venues and public spaces, the threat and promise of commercial success, and the further policing of public life have posed a threat to the wellbeing of the culture.

SSO #7, ‘Sound Systems at the Crossroads’ aims to open a space for sound system practitioners, performers and scholars to come together to reflect on the challenges facing the culture today and to discuss which resources the movement can muster to pull through and ensure our continued flourishing.

In SSO #7, we ask, what are the obstacles facing sound systems today, and what kind of solutions can be found for them? In what ways can sound systems build a collective challenge to structures of power in present conditions? How do sound systems respond to the restrictions brought by hostile legislation, a lack of venues, and tightening noise regulations? What strategies have practitioners deployed to sustain themselves and the community when they are not allowed to play out? How has the role played by social media platforms to keep music alive under lockdown conditions affected this auditory, physically shared, street-based culture? How do we imagine the streets after the lockdown? And how do we envision our shared future in its aftermath?

We invite artists, engineers, musicians, selectors, academics, activists, researchers and anyone else who participates directly or indirectly in sound system culture to contribute to this online event.

• Presentations can take the form of a talk, workshop, film screening, roundtable discussion, online sound system session and so on. 
• Approaches can include practice-as-research methodologies, drawing from Cultural and Postcolonial Studies, Sound Studies, Reggae Studies, Popular Music Studies, Critical Black Studies and Caribbean Critical Theory. 
• We welcome all engaging with sound system music, culture, technology, dance, oral history, business, marketing, etc, including from a gender and intergenerational perspective.

 

We welcome contributions in a range of formats, including:

• Talks and presentations 
• Demonstrations 
• Hybrid talks and demonstrations 
• Performances live and/ or recorded 
• Live sound system sessions 
• Online exhibitions 
• Novel formats 
• Film screenings

 

Contributions welcomed on (but not limited to):

• The global spread of sound system culture 
• History and futures of sound system in Jamaica and abroad 
• Urban gentrification, lack of venues, noise limitations 
• Sonic resistance and public space 
• Sound systems under lockdown 
• Creative responses to the lockdown 
• Imagining new possibilities 
• Sound systems and digital media: challenges and opportunities 
• Sound, technology and gender 
• Music, technology and black diaspora 
• Sound, music and migration 
• Auditory epistemologies 
• Vernacular knowledge and street technology

 

SSO #7 follows in the wake of previous events at Goldsmiths, Naples and Brazil (online) since 2017. Events and Collaborations.

Sound System Outernational is an ongoing initiative of practitioners and researchers, in association with Goldsmiths, University of London, dedicated to recognizing, stimulating and supporting sound system culture worldwide. SSO creates spaces for dance and discussion. We organize events to bring together:

• Practitioners and researchers: we believe the ways of knowing of a popular culture and the knowledge systems of the academy have a lot to learn from each other. 
• Past, present and future sound system culture: intergenerational conversations strengthen our culture and ensure its future. 
• Technologies, aesthetics and politics: to understand the culture’s numerous forms, styles and media of creative expression.

SSO #7 is a collaboration between Sound System Outernational and Sonic Street Technologies (SST). SST(SST) is an ERC funded research project (2021 – 2025) examining the culture, diaspora and knowledges of subaltern and Global South uses of sound technologies. Jamaican sound systems, Brazilian aparelhagem, Mexican sonideros and Colombian los picos provide good examples. The project aims to map the distribution and history of these SST worldwide; to investigate the social, economic and cultural conditions from which they are born; and to achieve a deeper understanding of the nature of technology itself and its uses for social and economic progress. SST adopts a practice-as-research methodology as a respect for the knowledge embodied in current sound system and similar street cultures and to help build capacities for their autonomous development.

 

SSO #7 Call for Participation:

Send a proposal of not more than 300 words by 3 May to soundsystemouternational@gmail.com accompanied by a short bio (100 words)