This is the first in a series of blogs documenting the ongoing SST research in Colombia, mainly focused around picó culture. Not claiming to be comprehensive or authoritative, what follows is rather the result of several conversations, meet ups, and explorations that happened over a preliminary research trip in December 2022 aimed precisely at doing networking […]
Bringing the practitioners’ voice to the fore, acknowledging their own understanding of what they do, and giving value to their own lived experience are important ways to ensure that the research is respectful of the grassroots scenes within which the knowledge is originated. As part of the non-extractive research ethos, filming research interviews opens up […]
by David Katz Spending a month in Costa Rica was inspiring and instructive. It is a stunningly beautiful place with unique subcultures that have gradually evolved in different parts of the country for different reasons. The music scene is incredibly varied, and reggae has long been a part of it, especially in the Caribbean province […]
Reggae sound system culture constitutes one of the primary areas of interest for the SST research, given its longstanding history and truly global spread. In the last two decades, Europe has slowly become one of the most active continents for reggae and dub sound systems, with a new generation of practitioners putting into practice what […]
On December 8, 2022 I had the opportunity to accompany the Sonic Street Technologies team to the 4S annual conference in Cholula, Mexico. This occasion felt special not only because it was the first time that I would be able to present my research to a wider audience, but also because I would do so […]
Las SST bajo el volcán: la presentación en 4s El 08 de diciembre de este año tuve la oportunidad de acompañar al equipo de Sonic Street Technologies a la conferencia anual de 4s en Cholula, México. La ocasión sería especial no sólo porque sería la primera vez que presentaría los avances de mi trabajo de […]
This blog is available in English at this link. Estamos particularmente interessados nos aparelhos móveis usados para tocar música gravada. Este ângulo especificamente tecnológico do projeto SST atravessa os gêneros musicais e geografias que mais frequentemente definem a pesquisa sobre cultura popular. Ele nos permite explorar como diferentes tecnologias estão sendo implantadas para construir comunidades […]
Certain SST, reggae sound systems in particular, have spread all over the world by means of physical migration, material resonance or mere imitation. In doing so, they often undergo a process of adaptation – showing how these techno-cultural apparatuses can themselves be repurposed in order to fit specific cultural, social and economic contexts that are […]
Researching the dynamic living music scenes that surround SST presents certain challenges. Not least amongst these is that the material we gather is most often oral, or social media posts, rather formal written records, let alone statistics. With SST this is always with the consent and participation of the professionals and aficionados of these scenes. […]
At SST we always experiment with ways to make our research more accessible and wide-reaching. When doing fieldwork alongside sound systems and other sonic street technologies professionals we come in contact with an astonishing body of knowledge and practices embodied in the life stories of fiercely creative people who are virtually unknown out of their […]
Huddersfield is a town in Yorkshire in the north of England where the Caribbean diaspora has a long-standing presence. For a brief period in the 1980s, it has unexpectedly developed into one of the key centres of sound system cultures in the UK. Our research agents in the area, Mandeep Samra and Gopal Dutta conducted […]
The Lewisham Sound System Trail was an event organized by the Lewisham Borough of Culture 2022 comprising of four open air sound system stages, or yards, set up in the Deptford area and featuring established and up and coming sound system operators, singers and MCs from the Lewisham borough. Unit 137, one of the four […]
SST hosted a research network meeting on Friday 6th May 2022 called Relationalities of Research. We invited research colleagues that are part of the SST network to share and explore our relationships as practitioners and researchers to our fields of enquiry and participants. We choose this topic, Relationalities of Research, as a common theme […]
This blog is the final iteration a series of soundwalk ethnographies aimed at verifying the resilience of the sonidero culture during Covid-19 restrictions. Young researcher Linette Rivera guides us through the streets of Mexico City again, this time in the district of Tepito in October 2021, where the people have designed a strategy to defeat […]
In this blog post, friend of the SST project, Dr. Enrico Bonadio of City, University of London reviews the just published Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright, and the Reverberations of Colonial Power by Larisa Kingston Mann. Here at the SST project, we have been attending to the many ways that different kinds of technology […]
Over the years, certain SST cultures may grow to a level which the very same practitioners wouldn’t have ever expected. This is certainly the case for the Jamaican sound system: a globally spread, massively celebrated and widely inspiring culture – but also a local industry, which employs hundreds of professionals in different roles who together […]
El proyecto SST está interesado en documentar el impacto que tuvo la pandemia en la actividad de las tecnologías de los sonidos de las calles en todo el mundo, tanto en el sentido positivo como en el negativo. La prohibición de sesiones y el aumento de la represión policial son unos de los resultados negativos […]
The SST project is keen to document the impact that the pandemic had on the activity of sonic street technologies worldwide, in both bad and good ways. The ban on sessions and the increased police repression are among the most common negative outcomes experienced by all SST scenes at different latitudes.
SST se alegra en dar la bienvenida a una nueva bloguera invitada de la Ciudad de México. La joven investigadora Linette Rivera nos lleva a través de un paseo sonoro por dos cunas de la cultura sonidera en la Ciudad de México, el Mercado Jamaica y el Mercado Sonora, para comprobar si los sonideros funcionaban […]
SST is pleased to welcome a new guest blogger from Mexico City. Young researcher Linette Rivera takes us through a sound walk across two cradles of the sonidero culture in Mexico City, Mercado Jamaica and Mercado Sonora, to check out whether the sonideros were playing out despite Covid19-related restrictions. — The sonideros parties in […]
As researchers deeply invested in the popular culture of sound systems and other SST, we are well-aware that these are ongoing scenes established long before we arrived. Each specific SST operates within an existing ecology, that has developed usually across decades and below the radar of official or academic recognition. The knowledge that is produced […]
The history of sound system culture in Melbourne (and indeed Australia), is rich and diverse, yet on a continent largely dominated by rock music it has received little attention from the media or scholars [1]. Meanwhile, over the last decade more than a dozen sound systems have been built in Melbourne alone, a city of 5 million inhabitants which has prided itself […]
“Urabá Sound System: Sounding with Purpose” has been an “encuentro picotero” (a picós meeting), held from July the 2nd to July the 4th, 2021 in the Municipality of Apartadó, in Urabá Antioqueño – Colombia. The event included musical and cultural sessions, such as discussions on the context, history and challenges of the picó culture, and a “memory carousel” […]
El encuentro URABÁ SOUNDSYSTEM sonando con propósito, se llevó a cabo los días 2,3 y 4 de julio de 2021 en el Municipio de Apartadó, en el Urabá antioqueño – Colombia. Se realizaron conversatorios sobre el contexto, historia y desafíos de la cultura picotera, un carrusel de la memoria donde se compartieron fotografías, discos, emociones y se produjeron documentos con la intención de demostrar la sistematicidad, pertinencia y eficacia de la práctica picotera como un escenario de construcción de paz. […]
This article is the second part of an ongoing series on Instagram-based ethnographies investigating the visual cultural, textual, and affective norms of sonic street technologies globally. The previous post we explored some of the ways that we are using Instagram as a site to conduct ethnographic research. This week we are looking at some of the trends we have observed thus far in our visual […]
This article is part on an ongoing series on Instagram-based ethnographies investigating the visual cultural, textual and affective norms of sonic street technologies globally. Sound system cultures are multifaceted, diverse, and multi-sited phenomena that call for robust and eclectic methodological and theoretical orientations. Instagram-based research of its visual cultures was developed in response to […]
