I’ve been musing on the sonic, as an entity and a technology. The verbal and non-verbal spiritual undertones of Ancestors’ voices in the form of utterings, moans, sighs, screams, songs, and poems occupy my waking and trance states of being. Having just celebrated Black Music Month, I’m still listening to these sounds, new to my ears but ancient in their design. I’ve tapped into some new experimental music produced by the curiosities of Black sound artists, poets, and painters such as Mario Moore and Aja Monet who are deconstructing traditional ways of listening to Jazz, and are embodying it as a cultural soundtrack. These innovations are calling forth the spirits of James Baldwin, Abbey Lincoln, Odetta, and Shirley Chisolm.
In this same vein, I started this season witnessing and leaning into music design and music education at the Summer Music Camp for Girls offered by the Oakland Public Conservatory of Music which hosted an intimate and intentional intensive for girls, non-binary and gender-expansive youth. For four weeks, and for the first time with instruction by an all womxn-identified faculty, approximately 40 young musicians were given permission to consider how gender and culture intersect through explorations with a myriad of musical instruments and technologies that encouraged them to tell their own stories and deposit their own narratives into the living archive.
Yeah, I’ve been musing on the sonic and touching new parts of my queer identity through works-in-progress that sound like loud PRIDE and taste salty like Freedom. I invite you to consider the complicated and glorious aspects of your identity and listen for new, artful sounds in the summer heat.
Expanding in Joy,
Ashara
