Revolutionary Tools.

(Re)sources for (un)learning

Session 1: Introduction

What is study? The space(s) we create together.

‘The Wild Beyond: With and for the Undercommons’ Jack Halberstam in The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten

Session 2: Racial politics of music and its migrations

‘The Changing Same (R &B and New Black Music)’ Amiri Baraka/Leroi Jones in Black Music

‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’ Stuart Hall

‘How Blackfolk Became Fetish Objects’ Greg Tate and ‘Scenes from Umkovu’, a play by Eisa Davis in Everything But The Burden

To watch: Hari Kunzru’s Reading of White Tears and Conversation with Bernardine Evaristo

Session 3: Revolutions of Revolution

‘ "When History Sleeps”: A Beginning’ Robin D. G. Kelley in Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

‘Introduction’ Saidiya Hartman in Beautiful Experiments, Wayward Lives

‘National Liberation and Culture’ Amilcar Cabral

‘By the Wretched of the Earth-An Interview with Rocé’ in The Funambulist

To listen with the question of how these tracks speak to/chime with revolution:

Dear Mr Man (ft Prince)

Universal Mother Don Cherry

Broader than a Border M.I.A

Session 4: Music as radical feminist praxis

‘Black Women Working Together:Jazz, Gender, and the Politics of Validation’ Tammy L. Kernodle

Prologue and Introduction in Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography by Andrea Warner

‘The Chorus Opens the Way’ in Beautiful Experiments, Waywards Lives by Saidiya Hartman

Additional Reading:

‘The Making of Sathima Bea Benjamin’ in Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times by Robin D.G. Kelley and Part II

‘Introduction’ in Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound by Daphne A. Brooks. Part II and Part III

Session 5: A Spirit Speaks in many tongues

‘Introduction' Ashon T Crawley in Black Pentecostal Breathe: The Aesthetics of Possibility Part II of Introduction

‘Introduction’ Richard Brent Turner in Soundtrack to a Movement: African American Islam, Jazz and Black Internationalism

‘Conclusion’ Richard Brent Turner in Soundtrack to a Movement: African American Islam, Jazz and Black Internationalism

Session 6: Architectures of Sonic Liberation

‘“Why Can’t We Go Somewhere There?” Sun Ra, Improvisation and the Imagination of Future Possibilities’ by Ajay Heble in Canadian Theatre Review

‘World Galaxy’ Kara Keeling in Queer Times, Black Futures

To Watch

Luaka Bop Presents: Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda

To Listen

It’s After the End of the World Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Solar Arkestra

Additional Reading

‘Listening to the Unsung and the Quiet Imagination: A Conversation with DJ Lynée Denise’ by Chandra Frank in Journal of Popular Music Studies

Session 7: Echo Chambers of Revolution in South Africa

‘It’s in the out sides: An investigation into the cosmological contexts of South African jazz’ Asher Gamedze

‘Decolonising the mind through song: from Makeba to the Afropolitan present’ by Quintina and Aaron Carter-Ény

To Watch:

Asher Gamedze and Another Time Ensemble

Sonic bodies

Session 8: (Re)imagining other worlds: ‘Improvisation will save the World’ Sun Ra

‘World Galaxy’ Kara Keeling in Queer Times, Black Futures

‘It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism’ Mark Fisher in Capitalist Realism

‘Beyond the “real” world, or why Black radicals need to wake up and start dreaming’ Robin D G Kelley

‘Witness to love between generations’ bell hooks