ISBN : 9780199936397
Africa In Stereo examines the role that African American music has played in the pan-Africanist imagination since the end of the nineteenth century. Throughout, Jaji marshals a wide array of critical, archival, literary, visual, and sonic sources to craft an argument centered on the stereophonic echoes between three sites on the African continent emblematic of pan-Africanism (Ghana, Senegal, and South Africa) and black musical cultures in the US (as well as few other places on the diasporic landscape). Rather than take a purely musical tack that traces the influence of African American music on musical repertoires from Ghana, Senegal, and South Africa, Africa In Stereo beautifully shows how a US black popular musical genres inspired a host of writers and filmmakers such as Ousmane Sembene, John Akomfrah, Sol Plaatje, Leopold Senghor, K. Anyidoho, Charlotte Maxeke, Ken Bugul, as well as the glossy visual languages found in the early magazines Bingo (Senegal) and Zonk! (South Africa).
Table of Contents
One: Stereomodernism And Amplifying The Black Atlantic
Two: Sight Reading: Early Black South African Transcriptions of Freedom
Three: Negritude Musicology: Poetry, Performance and Statecraft in Senegal
Four: What Women Want: Selling Hi-Fi in Consumer Magazines and Film
Five: "Soul to Soul": Echo-locating Histories of Slavery and Freedom from Ghana
Six: Pirate's Choice: Hacking into (Post-)Pan-African Futures
Epilogue: Singing Songs
Bibliography
Notes