Sound System Epistemologies: Knowledge engendered through Practice

• Applicant: Dr. Stefanie Alisch
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 532753481

Sound systems are an international music performance configuration that combines amplified playback of pre-recorded sound with interactive performances and the visual prominence of speaker boxes in order to make people dance. Jamaican sound systems are highly developed and enduring cultural institutions that shaped genres like reggae, dub and dancehall, even considered the national instrument. Through Jamaican style sound systems emerged music genres such as jungle, dubstep, UK garage, and grime in the UK, as well as hip hop in the US. As a concept, „sound system cultures of the Black Atlantic“ extend beyond the styles above and include house, kuduro, picó, broken beat, coupé decale or reggaetón, and can be extended to scenes of freetekno or breakcore. Despite their growing international significance, sound systems are often under-valued and under-theorized in the study of music which can lead to misinterpreting cultural dynamics and musical materialities. Sound system studies as an emerging academic field spawned research projects in Jamaica, the UK, Brazil, and Italy. However, with a focus on heroic male figures it tends to overlook the importance of sociability and the contributions of many. Gender dynamics play a significant role in sound system cultures, and women have been involved since the early days, although their contributions have been under-documented and undervalued. Sound system practices involve the transmission of knowledge, including technical, spatial, sonic, and kinetic repertoire. However, the gendered nature of knowledge production here privileges cis men and largely excludes other genders. Thus the production of knowledge and (often marginalised) masculinities go hand in hand in sound system practice. The Sound System Epistemologies (SSE) project examines how masculinity and knowledge co-constitute each other, it asks what forces are at play to keep this system in place, and how people circumvent them. SSE investigates the embodied nature of knowledge by drawing on concepts like tacit knowing or reflection-in-action and methods such as thick participation, photo & video elicitation or learning to perform to externalise embodied knowledge and illuminate the rituals of masculinity within sound system practices. Through contrasting case studies SEE illuminates how gender and knowledge work together in specific music scenes of Lisbon batida, freetekno, acid house, female & queer London sound systems and female rappers in deutschrap. It contributes thus to the budding field of masculinity studies in popular music. SSE theorises the sound system as a socio-spatial techno-sonic performance configuration and develops a new paradigm of music performance that transcends the dichotomy of live music and recorded music.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups