Machine-Gun Sonics and Whispering Tides: How Sound and Language in the work of Kamau Brathwaite and Mighty Sparrow provide an Acoustic Inoculation against InsecuritiesTools Harris, Mark. 2018. 'Machine-Gun Sonics and Whispering Tides: How Sound and Language in the work of Kamau Brathwaite and Mighty Sparrow provide an Acoustic Inoculation against Insecurities'. In: Caribbean In/Securities. University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, United States 2017-18. [Conference or Workshop Item] (Forthcoming) No full text availableAbstract or DescriptionThe living environmental sounds of the Caribbean, the noises of interaction and music in urban neighborhoods, the subversion of colonial English in speech and calypso, the murmuring of waves on the sand, the memory of slave songs and of the terror of the Middle Passage comprise a soundscape of deep temporality that alerts and protects against present vulnerabilities. These acoustics, invented as vivid audio images by Kamau Brathwaite’s poems and Mighty Sparrow’s songs, mark out territories of affirmation underlying creative resistance to postcolonial hegemony. They form surreptitious sonic maps of identities marked on one level by histories of migration and of slave rebellions and labour strikes; on another level by the familial language of friends and relatives, stories salvaged through acclamation by poets and singers from being overwhelmed by dominant cultural values. Such performances recognize these sounds as the celebration of everyday life, as a sonic inoculation against infection by misrepresentative histories, dysfunctional language and inflexible hierarchies.
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