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    Africa in Stereo, Stereomodernism

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    Jennifer Andrea Sosa

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Africa in Stereo MODERNISM, MUSIC, AND PAN-AFRICAN SOLIDARITY Isitsi Ella Jaji OXFORD fay Stereomodernism AMPLIFYING THE BLACK ATLANTIC Two weeks before my fourth birthday, Zimbabwe gained independence after a long and bloody struggle against first British colonialism and then the racist Ian Smith regime. I remember my father and brother going to Rufaro Stadium in Mbare for the independence festivities in April 1980. My brother shared with my grandfather the name Tafirenyika—meaning “we have died for our country” in Shona—and it seemed fitting that he, the youngest member of our family, should witness the fruition of the costly war for independence. I later learned that Robert Nesta Marley had performed that night, celebrating the new nation by singing “Zimbabwe.” a song that had been an anthem of global solidarity with the fight against the Rhodesian Front and its allies.’ My own memories of those celebrations are vicarious, and in fact it is another Bob Marley song, “Buffalo Soldier” that 1 remember most vividly as the first tune Tlearned from the radio? Cowritten by Marley and Noel “King Sporty” Williams, “Buffalo Soldier” was posthumously released in 1983, and went on to become one of Marley's best-known anthems. Returning to these lyrics years later, I am struck by the ways in which it maps the routes of a pan-African imaginary, inscribing both an attachment to the continent and what Nahum Chandler has called the “originary displacement” of the Middle Passage, as well as intra-American migrations: “There was a buffalo soldier in the heart of America/Stolen from Africa, brought to America... Driven from the mainland to the heart of the Caribbean.” Marley’slyricincisively “analyze(s] the stench” ofthe trans-Atlantic slave trade's dehumanizing terrors. Yet, his song commemorates the African American regiments recruited in the wake of the American Civil War to fight ' For more on Marley’ performance, see Grant Farred, Whats My Name?: Black Vernacular Intellectuals (Minneapolis: U M 303), 216-22, * Bob Marley and N. G, Williams, “Buffalo Sold Confrontation. Tulf Gong Studios/island Records, 1983 ‘Nahum Chandler, “Originary Displacement” in Boundary 2 273 (Fall 2000): 249-86 on Bob Marley and the Wailers album Alvicain Stereo. labor of slavery—"fighting on arrival, fighting for survival"—to the Buffalo. ee ae coer ting for ure ‘of resistance—Chimurenga in the a aaa aeree cates al per a ee ee ‘This book offers an account of the ways in which black diasporic music tray- Joni agron Thee chimp ai fst pci ei eros of esance coli ag sro aly espns cys Nebnds Sekar Kor the endothe eee rar Te cp Chinen he Trsonsiegp leading nepenence Memesernote ved in one onan comme sth fee Map 2ANU.PE payne fed "care ue anesthe echt cr SArPeieesor agai pull opeonnts thse dotnet wont meng Steromedernion 3 fn a particular axis of exchange, between US. African American musi and Ghanaian, Senegalese, and South African cultural production, I demonstrate how these locations are both exemplary and exceptional within what has come tobe known asthe Black Atlantic. Africa in Sterco pursues three intersecting lines of inquiry—namely soli- dling the trans-Atlantic slave trade and, oa lesser extent, in the migration {rom former colonies the Caribbean, Asta, and Africa to Europe This usage of diaspora marks my sense of important continuities between US. Afrcen American music and these other locations including the fact that this masie has abvays been defined by multiple waves of movement, migration, and ‘immigration. What 1 am proposing is that, when considering the cultural pro Auctions ofthe diaspora, Africa should be understood asa constitutive corn Ponent of that diaspora, rather than asa point of origin now removed from the contemporary diaspora ‘To return to our opening broadcast, itis of signal importance that US. African American history should figure so large in Marley’ “Buffalo Soles? forthe songexemplifies waysin which African America haslongbeen paradig. ‘matic of black diasporic experience in many fields of representation. Scholars have long noted the centrality (or in the mote strident terms of Jacqueline assy Brown, the hegemony) of African America within the continum of black diasporc experiences” However, there is much work tobe done on the particularities of the reception of African American cultural produetion in ‘Atica asthe histories of Ghana, Senegal, and South Aftica make clear, The chapters ahead race how collaborative musical practices—congregaional singing, jaz, soul music, blues, and avant-garde collective Improvisation —- Served African writers and filmmakers as studies in, of, and for collabor tive political and imaginative practice. Within a pan-Aftican imaginary, this Imusic appealed as a modernist expression already shaped by resistance and ‘he signifyin(g) practices of blue notes, melismas, and improvisational il, a Point I wil return to below. Examining how these forms came to exert sch influence in Africa not only helps to historicize the popularity of hybrid musi. cal forms lke Baaba Maals Afropop, the Soweto Gospel Choirs songs, and Reggie Rockstone'hip-ife, but also elucidates the work that music has done in the public and creative spheres. Its this broader cultural impact tha is my Primary interest In short the musical forms discussed in Africa in Stereo have ‘ben important at key historical moments, revealing how, beyond a mere pea. sate principle, music ha quite literally rehearsed transnational black solidarity emerging simultaneously in literature, lm, and other cultural domains Solidarity: Thinking in Stereo. Paul Gilroy’ articulation of The Black Atlantic asa (perhaps the) privileged locus for thinking about “modernity and double consciousness” has served 8 both inspiration and provocation for this book. Twenty yeats on, the = eine Nw Baw “ick Legon Rack Aer ad the Gnd Bajo ‘Space! in Ctra! Anthropology ws (\998}:agt-s3s, soa , Alia tn Stereo {geographical frame of reference Gilroy explored so fruitfully in his 1993 text (building on a concept also articulated by Winston James and others) and the keen attention he pays to music have clearly enriched understandings of trans-Atlantic black cultural exchanges and diasporic processes. However, his claims have been contested from their first appearance and subsequent stud- fes have continued to add nuance, texture, and contrapuntal voices to the Black Atlantic» Where The Black Atlantic focused largely onthe global North, | drav attention to African participation in the “counter-culture of modernity” Furthermore, pan-Africanism has been portrayed asa largely male-dominated tradition; however, have tried throughout the book to recover overlooked archives of womens voices, and where this has not proved possible, to think ‘carefully about how and why pan-Africanism is gendered. | take as my point of departure Gilroy’s suggestive description of the Black. Atlantic as "the stereophonic, bilingual, bifocal cultural forms originated by, bout no longer the exclusive property of, blacks dispersed within the structures of feeling, producing, communicating, and rememiering™ Extending this stereophonic framework to Aftica, fam not only interested in the metaphori- cal sense ofthe stereo as a technological device for creating surround sound fects, but also how the Black Atlantic musics thet might play on such a stereo ‘emerge as significant conduits of transnational black solidarity. ‘One might well question the contemporary relevance of pan-Afticanist solidarity. Certainly 9 compelling narrative about pan-Africanism holds that it was most effective in the simultaneous struggles against calonalism, apartheid, and legally sanctioned racist discrimination inthe twentieth cen tury. Once they were ofcially dismantled—and despite a growing realiza- tion that these systems have simply morphed into nev forms of multinational capitalist exploitation, imperialism, and corruption—the politcal energy that these forms of solidarity fueled appeared to dissipate, Hence, to speak of pan-Africanism as an ongoing project now scoms outmoded. Yet itis pre- cisely because the challenges of new forms of exploitation ae so acute and pervasive that renewed perspectives on liberation movements and solidar- ity are so urgently needed. If we understood more fully the history of small “p’ pan-Africanism that unfolded in those cultural arenas easly dismissed as mere “leisure.” we would recognize its entelechy, a renewable energy waiting to be tapped by social movements new and old confronting the confounding political quandaries of our day "Thre ia ich body of work on tannin black clu aio borer the dent orm Iain rth te of colton eed by Farry Elam and Kenn Jackson exmpied yhe work of Brent Haye Edwards, Joy Btn Miche Steen, Alex Weheie, and Pine Ache Say, See Edwards, The Pcie of Digna Brome, Babin Gi, Sephens, Rack Emp, Webel Phonogephiy, nd Archer, Neopia a "Pal Gly, Te Pick Aon Modernity ad eae Concise (Cambie, MA: Harvand 1999) on Sterwomadernisn ° ‘his demands that we ask some tough questions: Just what kind of soidar- ity can be generated by music? Or literature? Film? Magazines? Internet sites?” ‘And what are the limits of solidarity? How does one address the danger in calling the consumption and recycling of cultural exports from the work] {and historys) most dominant capitalist power, the US. a form of solidarity? And how is this solidarity distinct from essentialist notions of black identity, ven that any collectivity based on race risks scapegoating those judged to pollute the imagined purity ofthe group. When diaspora-continental relations are anchored in the notion of Mother Arica or even the Middle Passage as a site of origin to which all journeys aim to return, we are in dangerous water because when origins ae singular there is little room for deviation, wandering, to detours on the way back “home” ‘We need, then, a model of solidarity that is neither rigid nor bound by orthodoxies, one which could bear witness to difference and respond to it in joyful creativity, one which values individual listening as much as enunciation 1s (proactive dimensions of expressivity The Martinican linguist and record- ing artist, Jacques Coursil, in fact argues for the acknowledgment of plural listening experiences rather than a single listening collect La nécessaite singularté du parlant oppose a ta possible pluralité des entendants. Cetepluralité des entendants (dont le paraat fait parte) définit espace du dialogue, Notons que l'écoute peut étre plurielle mais non pas collective. En effet, pour un méme groupe, une méme salle de clase, une nation toute entiére écoutant un méme programme de radio, Pentendant ‘st solitaire. Chaque participant, chaque éléve de la classe, chaque audlt- ‘cur entend ce qu'il entend strictement individuellement, Cette inlividualité dela fonction es lige Tautonomie physique des sujets: je peux avoir mal centendu, mais personne ne peut entendre pour moi ni par‘ moi En eli Jes entendants sont indépendants, [The necessary singularity of the speaker contrasts withthe possible plurality ofthe hearers, Ths plurality of hearers (among whom the speaker is inchided) defies the space of dialogue. Let ‘us note that listening can be plural but not collective I fact, forthe same ‘group, the same classroom, the same entire nation listening to the same radio program, the hearer is solitary. Pach participant, each stadent ofthe class, each listener hears what he or she heat strictly as an indivical, This {individuality ofthe faculty is tied to the physical autonomy of the subject. ‘Tew we of ical nwo ssn the Aza Spring (200-1) ofereda el vero kas othe gusto of ner ss Nonetheless tt many ofthe movements he Arb pring nfl on Alan sim hist pan- Alan ke: yp Gamal Naser wash edn ign ner capital "P" Panam organization forename ao nis Carge Fy Fes. smal'p"pan-Arcan gatheritg Sao, of oars, wa Calo esmmae AF Oat sap on and fring he Ac non o Alita tn Stereo | may have misheard, but no-one can hear for me nor through me, Clearly, heaters are independent.)* Coursi astutely points out that scenes of listening allow fora plurality of recep tion, and an ensemble of responses, which are free and innumerable. Edouard Glissant would call such scene a veritable chaos-monde,a “totality composed ‘of individuals and communities” Glissant suggests that the complexity of such chgos-monde can be deciphered through the analytic of what he calls, echo-monde: “In Relation analytic thought is led to construct unities whose interdependent variances jointly piece together the interactive totality. These nities are not models but revealing echas-monde, ‘Thought makes music." Responding to Glissant’s elegant formulation, Africa in Stereo is structured around individual case studies which, taken together, arc indeed a set of inter dependent variances pieced together into an interactive totality. ‘Along with many in the “born-free" generation of Zimbabwe, I have wit rnessed not only the joys of national liberation but also the many disappoint- ‘ments of the post-colonial condition. Given this perspective, I want to avoid naive vision of the relationships between nationalism, pan-Afticanism, and human rights. Undoubtedly, Western human rights discourse too often deserves criticism for its indebtedness to imperialist logics: it would be better ta clean house at home before imposing “order” in less geopolitically powerful sovereign countries. On the other hand, as Albert Memmi presciently warned in 1957,a newly independent leader may well bbe nationalistic but aot, of course, internationalistic. Naturally, by so doing, hhe uns the risk of falling into exclusionism and chauvinism, of sticking to the most narrow principles, and of setting national solidarity aginst human solidarity—and even ethnic solidarity against national solidarity” In searching for a durable articulation of human rights and human solidarity, have found the imaginative scope of Raoul Vanelgeris A Declaration of the Rights of Human Beings: On the Sovereignty of Life as Surpassing the Rights of ‘Man compelling Vaneigem, an oft-overlooked member of the Situationist International, proposes an ambitious and poetic model of human rights that ‘goes beyond the conceptualization of rights rooted in the Enlightenment. His insistence on the importance of individual pleasure and creativity seems wholly consistent with Glissant’ theory of Relation as granting the right of opacity jacques Cour, a Foci Mute de Langage: Eval de Upson contra (i Bory Gatdeoape: is Rouge, 2000) 68 Ete Glsant, Poti of ebm rane Betsy Wing (Ane Arbor: U Michigan R97) ib 9a-9 » alent Mem. The Cloner and The Cloie, ans Howard Grereld (aslo: Beacon Pres 65). = Raoul Vaeigm, A Declaration ofthe Right of Haman Blas On the Sovereignty of Life as Surpassing he Rg Mar, an. Lit Heron Londen Pho Pres, 200) Stereomoderniom a and leaving room for errance (wandering). In tracing the relation between individual delight and the possibility of solidarity, Vaneigem writes: “[dlelight in the self is not a withdrawal but an opening, through which pleasure taken in one’s own company is discovered and refined through society with others" Hr goes further to warn that ‘The tes of solidarity area hindrance unless they ae willingly bound by the afinties which animate a common deste for pleasure, independence and individual creativity. Wherever the will to live abolishes the will to power, those who come together save themselves most surly from the ways of thinking that have turned groupings, associations, collectivities and other fellowships into hotbed of resentment, hatred and bogus attachment» Twrite with the conviction that pan-Africenism is no bogus attachment, but rather a form of solidarity whose history the stories presented here show in new density Solidarity inthe face of racism is but one ofthe grounds for afl ation, but it is by no means a stale one. The evidence against the notion of postracial age mounts daily; by any measure, black and brown life has always been and continues to be more imperiled than white life, The racial disparities in incarceration, graduation, and life expectancy rates in the United States; the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Haiti the deaths of thousands of innocents who have perished in drone attacks in the “war on terror” in Asia and AMfice and the uncountable people in the glabsl South crushed by the consequences of ate capitalism all make this clear. Yet the histories of solidarity among pa allel struggles for freedom reves! thatthe dificult and urgent work of collabo- rating across difference has often gained momentum through the pleasures of music. Africa in Slerco is about serious play Dubbing Sterco in for Solidarity ‘The etymological root of the word stereo is the Greek word eepeds, meaning “solid Its first use in English, judging from the Oxford English Dictionary’s entries, was in the word “stereometry” recorded in a 1570 mathematics text- book, whereit is defined asthe discipline of measuring slids. In this sense, the implication of solid asa body with volume offes a slightly different inflection from the notion of solid as firm, hard, or durable, The links between the wide range of terms—stereophonic, tereotypic, stereoscopic and more—also sug gest ways that stereo might be thought of as an effect, that which creates the impression of being surrounded by the contours of a voluminous, extensive three. dimensional body. Th ap mas 7 Alia in Stereo Stereo as a prefix flags Fundamentally illusionary devices. In audio engi neering, a stereophonic system creates the illusion of being surrounded by a three-dimensional shell of sound. In printing, 2 stereotype was historically a print made using a soli plate cast from a papier-maché or plaster mold taken from the surface of the original typesetting form. It thus produced a series, of increasingly distorted copies ofan original solid object—from original, to papier-maché or plaster east, to solid metal plate, to impress—used to render an impression of that original object. And itis this series of distortions that, by the carly twentieth century, embeded another kind of faulty repetition in the terms meaning. A stereotype in current usage signifies, according to the OED, “A preconceived and oversimplified idea ofthe characteristics which typify a person, situation, et: an attitude based on such a preconception. Also, a per~ son who appears to conform closely io the ides ofa type” This usage indexes the danger in illusions of fixity, which I try to attend to as closely a tothe pos. sibilities of solidarity. Finally the stereoscope isan optical device that repro duces the phenomenon of seeing athree-dimensional object by juxtaposing two slightly different images which the eye and mind interpret as detailing the relief ofthe extrapolated third “true” image. In each ofthese three cases, depth is not actual so much as « produced effect or impression, “Stereo” in these technologies refers to tools for experiencing the phenomenon of solidity. And. stereo as a metaphor indicates a means of experiencing solidarity, the choice to work en boc. {A stereaphonic sound system operates on the principle of minute tempo- ral delays in the signal received by each ear, mimicking the way that in an acoustic space sound from any given direction arrives at one side of our heads milliseconds before it reaches the other side, and with slightly different ampli tudes, This enables a stereo effect to he achieved with only two channels. The ‘metaphor ofa stereo effect achieved through slight difference refracts Brent Edwards interpretation of éécalage as an illustration of how “diaspora” artie- lates the body of global black presence, both connecting (just a8 joints are the connections between bones) and giving expression to (in more familiar sense of articulation) “difference within unity” As he describes it, the black diasporic décalage among African Americans and Alricans...is the kernel of precisely that which cannot be transferred or exchanged, the received biases that refuse to pass over when one crosses the water. Its a changing core of difference; itis the work of “dilferences within unity” an unidentifiable point that i incessantly touched and fingered and pressed. Deécalage, in Edwards's usage, neatly amplifies stereomodernism because ste ‘eo effects in a sound system are precisely those effects achieved through subtle. Tro Hayes Elva, The Pre of Dispos tert Talon andthe Re of Bae mermaoion (Camb, MA: Hareand UR ae 4. Stereamadernsm 8 Phase shifis between separate signals. The experience of surround sound, as ‘we have already seen, isachieved by the maintenance of slight temporal differ- ‘ences which the ear interprets psycho-acoustically as information about spa- tial orientation. ‘The notion of stereomodern listening as a creative, relational practice gen= erating its own spatial orientation also has much in common with what the French economist and philosopher, Jacques Attali has called composition. ‘Composition isthe last of his five hema for how music works in the world, the ‘others being listening, sacrificing, representing, repeating, Counterintuitively, Alali proposes that composing is a fundamentally collaborative and active practice, not a solitary, contemplative one. Composition is not so much the Production of new music asa “new way of making music” As he puts it ‘We are all condemned to silence—unless we create our own relation with the world and tr tote ther people into the meaning we thus create. That is what composing is. Doing solely forthe sake of doing, without trying to arti= fcilly recreate the old codes in order to reinscrt communication into them Inventing new codes, inventing the message atthe same time as the lan- ‘uage.. Composition thus appears as the negation ofthe division of roles ‘nd labor as constructed by the old codes, Therefore, in the final analysis, 0 listen to music inthe network of composition is to rewrite it: “to put music into operation, to draw it toward an unknown praxis" as Roland Barthes ‘writes in a fine text on Beethoven, The listener isthe operat ‘What is s0 exciting about Attalis insight Is the value he places on creativity 45 production distributed across an audience: "In composition, to produce is first of all to take pleasure in the production of differences! His vision ofthis ‘open process, in which listening is not simply passive, but an active and neces sary participation, matches the concept of stereomodernist I am working out here, and itis an imagination that has real, material consequences. ee ee ee ee * Pasig (vt onacingthe orl cn a onan ay af lor sng) ' phi ie bs example of sere fh sor,“ cn bated chon nd srg coting df othe ae a sal sai toes oe thee sal abe when rpodig soo oer lads oe hndponee: pK {stsefsbgseasa) Mou opiniones dpe on sue epost ewe the sud lg sen ah of to cas to seta nur empor iernes, heehee epee sp dito eenthetan a "ies A The Pic Eenoyof Mass tons, Ban Mass (Mineo 0 Migs te “iN a Affica in Stereo ‘THE “MODERN” IN STEREOMODERNISM ‘What it means tobe "moderns a vexed question in Aica, but rather than revisiting the hackneyed oppositions between purportedly stable categories of the modern (implying Westerized, colonialized, urban, lerate, and so on) and the traditional (implying local, vernacular, rural, oral) I am interested in how these categories are always already blured through movements of bodies, ideas texts, and cultural scripts. As numerous scholars have shown, schematic polarized notions of tradition and modernity are not only out- ated and reductive, but als often inaccurate, For example, the work of Kofi ‘Anyidoho, Catherine Col, John Colin, Stephanie Newell, Kwabena Nketi Kwesi Yankah, and others on popula culture and folklore demonstrate how oral literature continues to be a vibrant part of urban, mediatized, modern Ghansian life. Thinking through Africa place in the Black Atlantic necessar~ iy muddles these polarities into an even headier mix, and by following the bacchanal currents that music stirs up, a new optic on the modern emerges. [Neither peripheral noralternative, the forms of modernism examined here are collaboratively worked out among black subjects on the African continent and abroad, subjects who shareintereelated legacies af exclision from the supposed tusmodernity ofthe West as well s virtuosic repertoires of (e)-invented tra- ‘ditions that mark their modernist cultural productions. Following on from. ry discussion of “stereo” and solidarity, Africa in Stereo offers a new term, stereomodernism, asa usefl heuristic for analyzing textsand cultural practices that are both politcal and expressive, activated by black musi and operative within the logic of pan-A rican solidarity Over the lst century, Africans have inserted themselves into a coeval soba ld of cultural action as an intentional challenge tothe othering func- tion of time as space that Johannes Fabian outlined some thirty years ago.” Rejecting crude racist philosophies that have let Africa in the dark since the “Enlightenment” black people across the globe have viewed artistic excel- lence on a global stage as a crucial tactic to demand the end of their mod- ern subjection and the recognition oftheir modern subjectivity with all of is inherent human right. In the shared tsk ofa transnational response to rac- ist discourses, African American music mattered to AVicans as black music but also as modern musi, an expression of the experience born of industrial and financial capitalism, rapid urbanization, and new, postcolonial systems of governance. Many of the African writers, filmmakers, and musicians in this study recognized in African American forms not only artistic merit but also 4 compelling mode of articulating resistance forged inthe crucible of slavery and the long struggle for civil and buman rights, and so it was specifically the *jaanes Fabian, Teo ie Other How Antrpaby Makes ts Objet (New Yorke Calum uns. Stemomoderion » “counterculture of modernity” as performed in black music that made it so appealing ‘The continuum Between modernism, modernity, and modernization speaks in discipinary dialects that can turn what appear to be mere semantic slippages into substantive political and philosophical rifts and one might say that modernism isas troublesome a category as pan-Africanism. While | find the diverging directions in which Gaonkar, Jamieson, Hanchard, and others have pushed this term tobe compelling, use modernism ae simple heuisie device for indexing aesthetic choices that rellec seli-conscious performances of “being modern" Throughout the book I analyze stercomodernist texts performances, images, and events whose grammars and audiences are deter. mined by aspirations to transatlantic black solidarity. However, Keeping my use of modernism and modernity intentionally exible, recognize that ste~ reomodernism is necessarily informed by the debates over hese terms and the Politico-aesthetic movements that have traveled under the sign ofthe modern, as well asthe particular ways that race has inflected these movements. Susan Stanford Friedman has usefully parsed current usages, noting that human- ists see modernist asan asthetie response to modernity an (illusory) break With the past, a willed forgetting of tradition, continuity, order...the poet= ics of modernity-change—and the aesthetic inscriptions thereof”—while social Scientists see modernism as an atempt to manage modernity-—"sate Planning. ..otsizaion...centraized system...the Enlightenment’ rational schemata. Progress —'science'—teason'—"Truth?™ Yet ultimately, Friedman suggests the field ofthe mode, its experience in modernity and it ultural and socal manifestations in modernism defy definitional struggles, and reveal ‘more in the debates over meaning and scope than any possible resolution could offer and I find her invitation to confront and maintain the dssonances in what Amiri Baraka calls the BangClash of these “the oppositional mean- ings of modern/modernity/modernisn” highly suggestive, So 00, are Sanjay Subrahmanyam’ insights into the ways that modernity has always historically been a “plobal and conjuncture phenomenon, not a virus that spreads from ‘one place to another” Building on the work of Friedman, Subrahmanyam, and others, am mote interested in how various experiences and responses to modernity in its broadest sense are collaboratively constructed by AVrican artists in dialogue with diasporans. However, the specifics of this particular i tne Pint totais anaes Mt Ao Moly. Pt nh Aan Dior tn sme Saree Iams ny Fayence ea ee =a ne! Pon, “atid Ese Beg Nee ake Molnar Sha Sahm an Heigl Ea dry nS 430 ‘in Dacdnivs 127. (3998) 99-100, (cited in Eriedmoan, 507). " Ain in Stereo colsboratonaefr from simple andsereomaderasolary ceil nel- eran. sooth, nor uray lebron. {mann Gand bs dtly weed ho Back auc hve ged inthe his toy of twenevcenury Euro-American modern, and throughout this ook mech ofthe inti a eng and tena of modernism can be ced buck othe fie face in that sory. Glande acount ofthe oe the wy tht flees lk carl prouctns were etal but by no ean ungiblecomponenisin Western madernan sl contuction, td i 8 dong he ys te rounder for tracing the itrcatonships Between these lack culture of modernism Thus the ereomodernsm Ten cating fer shoud note ken fora simple esr, or ontlopealy Mack Shera, bt rater at the ea of pli and ele work necesated by precy the robles he highlight " Gikandi describeshow Euro-American modernism (particulatly its primitiy. \ststand was arfonned fone trangeste,eiphanc clr movement grounded in encounters wih what wat cnaced a radal Otherness ito E monuentalzaton of Weer igh citar ex wht he cls seu ever, ancvered though ae of procedtes to manage fence, He eal that moat without enepton, noon of ris ee err the nfoence of fica ant obecton the works of modern pinter and ellos (which afc theca hstory or feu the Aan Ameren byes the ap plement forthe Aan (wich ithe cate ieray sd) Howeve one ot thedangets eights in oo aya conflation race and geoph that {in focusing on the diasporic black a the standin forthe African, the critical tradition negates the curiously privileged role ofthe African American— in modernism—as an American. [This privilege is] curious because the ‘African American body is endowed withthe value of a primitivism that is ‘more consumable because of its Western familiarity” ‘Taking Gikandi’s insights in a diferent direction, I would argue that for both African American performers and their Aftican collaborators, this com- plicating factor of American-ness is never out of view. For the more poli cally committed figures in my book, this factor opens onto sharp critiques and. shared strategies of resistance to varying forms of racism; however, the story is more complicated than just a series of herote acts and stances against hege- ‘mony. The unique status of African Americans inflects in different ways the logics of uplift in the second chapter, contentions over complicity with Cold “Simon Gand “Nies ad the Epiphany of Modes in Gear: Rare, Modern, ene. Lara Boyland Lara Winkel (Slamagion and Tlanapo: lana UP 2006.3) hid, 33-6 Sereomoderism ” ‘War agendas in the third chapter, the enthusiastic adoption of consumerism in the fourth chapter, the reckonings with slavery’s meanings and repressions in the fith chapter, and the eppeal tothe energies of black avent-garde experi ‘mentalism in the sixth chapter A final, but erucial, influence on this exposition of stercomodernism is the body of ferninist scholarship on gender and sexuality in the Black Atiantic, beginning with the crucial work of d’Almeida, Andrade, Mudimbe-Boyi, Condé, Edwards, Sharpley-Whiting, Wilks, et.al. Michelle Stephens has use- fully made explicit the masculinist tradition within diasporic internationalism, ‘thus bringing a gender analytic to bear on what has often been naturalized as 4 neutral field of action. At the same time, Jacqueline Nassy Brownis work on black women in Liverpool reminds us that an Atlantic framework needs to include not only those who travel, but those who inhabit the contact zones enabling such travel, many of whom are women, Thus, I have tried to think about women whose roles as adjutants to more visible forms of pan-African action open onto a richer texture of cultural activities while pointing to fem hist genealogies emerging from archives we have too long mined only for the great male figures that dominate them. In addition, Jayna Brown's capacious account of Afro-diasporie performing women, Babylon Girls, has served as a ‘model for tracing transgressive political possibilities open to performers in terms of mobility visibility, and interpersonal encounters Itis this model that draws my attention to figures like Charlotte Maxeke, Katherine Dusthamn, Ken Bugul, and Roberta Flack, who participate in stercomodernist moments but refuse to sign on ( totalizing political projects that would peper over their own, ‘einscriptions of oppression along the lines of gender, class, and immigration. Stereomodernist Media The changing media of musical transmission over the course of the long twen- Uieth century are as key to historicizing cultural links as close readings of par- ‘ctr works, These medis forms are as much technologies of solidarity as the ‘music itself Through them, the essential work of listening brings afiiation, affinity, and negotiated resolution into acoustic liveness, fully resonant (or, qually important, muffed) across geographic, ethnic, linguistic, and tech ical fissures. My interest in the role of media forms arises most organically ‘ut of the fact that across the period covered in Africa in Stereo the means of cultural access has often determined the meanings made, audiences reached, and ends music is turned to. However, 1 am also building on a long tradi tion of African popular culture scholarship, anchored in Karin Barbers work ‘on pamphlet literature in Nigeria that has enriched studies of media forms as diverse as self-help manuals in Ghana (Newell), cassette tapes in Nigeria (Larkin), political cartoons in Cameroon (Mibembe), and radio programming 7 Aftica in Stereo. in South Africa (Hamm). More broadly, while John Guillory’ recent history. of the “media concept” is full of brilliant insights on the disciplinary overlaps ‘of media, cultural, and literary studies, its exclusive focus on Europe and the US. leaves much room for work on local contexts such as those I trace in Africa in Stereo. agree wholeheartedly with Guillory’ call for scholars of traditional at such as literature [o] take equally seriously both the mediation of literature [and other forms like music] by technologies such as print—~as they already do in the context of book history—and the longr

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