What does the future hold for sonic street technologies scenes? While we don’t know the answer to this, we do know the intergenerational transmission of the culture is an issue for many scenes around the world. We also know that one of the project’s briefs is to try to find out. Hence the need to […]
Besides screening our films for participants, touring them within the country is also a valuable part of the research process. From an international perspective Columbia or Brazil might appear as a single nation, but of course they are made up of different states, each with their own geographies, climates and music cultures. Great distances and […]
Una rama importante de la investigación de SST en Colombia se concentra en Urabá, en el noroeste del país. Desde el 2021, el colectivo Urabá Sound System está luchando por el reconocimiento del picó (el sistema de sonido autóctono del Caribe colombiano) como una herramienta comunitaria poderosa para fomenter la cohesión social, facilitando el proceso […]
The global scope of our project allows us to compare different types of sonic street technologies and their scenes. This week’s blog reports on the ongoing SST Mexico research, mapping out the current spread of reggae sound systems in in Mexico City and its relationship with the pre-existing sonidera scene. This home-grown Mexican sonic street […]
This week’s blog continues the series on the intergenerational dimension of sound system culture in the UK by guest author Becca Leathlean. After writing on her own journey in reggae, from being a solitary record collector to selectress and broadcaster in this previous blog, it’s now the turn of the older generation to give their perspective on the current state of […]
One of the most common issues for SST cultures around the world is certainly the difficulties to find spaces to play, which affects literally every scene we are researching. This is caused by a combination of reasons, including middle class disdain for street cultures, institutionalised racism against Black music, and widespread urban gentrification. As a result, anti-rave laws […]
ST is always ready acknowledge scholarship exploring black music and technology. As well as well as the work of sound system and other professionals, researchers also have a valuable role to play in helping to give recognition and respect to the creativity that often starts at street level. Dr Monique Charles is an inspiring Black […]
Repurposed or DIY sound technologies can be part of wider techno cultural assemblages that flourish in the urban space without having that of playing recorded music as their original purpose. This is the case of the jeepneys, an affordable transport system in Manila, that sometimes incorporate powerful custom-built sound systems for the pleasure of both the […]
Sonic street technologies take many forms and play many different kinds of music, but one amongst them – the reggae sound system – has travelled particularly far and wide. Historically its journey has been in the company of the Jamaican diaspora who are very well represented in Canada. As Jamaican music and culture has taken […]
This blog is the second iteration in a series of photo essays documenting the ongoing activities carried out by local forces in the Colombian region of Urabà with the purpose of preserving, nurturing and enhancing the local picotera culture which has been heavily affected by structural violence and government repression. […]
SST is proud to support Sound System Outernational #8, to be held in London on Saturday 5th of November 2022. SSO#8 UK Sound System Reasoning Day: Continuities and Disruptions, brings together sound system operators from around the UK and across different generations. We aim to celebrate and exchange knowledge about how sound system culture and […]
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 […]
Sound system cultures have intimate histories that implicate them in global networks of ecologies, infrastructures, and multiple instances of environmental and energy justice issues. In this blog, Sonic Street Technologies Research Assistant, Aadita Chaudhury reflects on some of the ways these domains intersect and interact at the site of sound system culture’s development and practice. […]
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 […]
In a previous post, Dakta Dub and Roy Dipankar of Bass Sanskriti wrote about the inception of their new Monkey Sound System. In this post, Dakta Dub, with inputs from Roy Dipankar, takes us through the idiosyncrasies of Indian bureaucracy and cultural spheres that they navigated prior to their sound system launch, and lessons to take […]
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 […]
Les sound systems tekno sont une composante de ces Sonic Street Technologies qui autour du monde ont été touchées par les mesures de restriction sanitaire. De ce point de vue, si les événements musicaux en streaming proposent un autre type d’expérience non dénué d’intérêt (cf. blog de Brian D’Aquino), ils ne peuvent prétendre se substituer […]
Tekno sound systems are a part of those Sonic Street Technologies that have been most severely affected by the health restriction measures around the world. In this respect, while streaming music events are a valuable type of experience, they cannot substitute for collective and intensive sound experiences of these physical spaces of expression and sociability, […]