Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Sound System Epistemologies (DFG)

Emmy Noether Research Group: Sound System Epistemologies (DFG)

Stefanie Alisch leads the inter-disciplinary research group "Sound System Epistemologies: Knowledge engendered through Practice" (SSE). SSE establishes the first Germany-based project in the field of sound system studies. SSE investigates how masculinity and knowledge production are dynamically intertwined in sound system practice. The projects strives to enhance music studies with a new theoretical understanding of musical performance.
Sound Systems boom and shake, sound systems produce noise and silence, echo and bass. They can make people sway and stand still, focus and zone out, they can lead to mayhem or harmony, to sweet joy and paranoid dread. They bring amplification, hype and dance. The sound system is an international music performance configuration, much like the concert, the dance circle or the procession. Highly pronounced and developed forms of this configuration are Jamaican sound systems. “Sound systems are one of the black diaspora’s most enduring and frequently unacknowledged cultural institutions” asserts Louis Chude-Sokei.

 

 

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Special Vybz International Sound System Hellshire Beach Jamaica 2019


SSE's Research Objectives:

1.) Document and investigate understudied scenes of Lisbon batida (SP1), London based queer/female/non-binary sound systems (SP2) and freetek (SP3).

2.) Theorise the sound system as music performance configuration.

3.) Develop methodology to mobilise and externalise tacit sound system knowledges.

4.) Illuminate how masculinities and knowledge production co-constitute each other.

5.) Engage sound system communities through pracitioner-led research methods.

6.) Investigate the collective nature of knowledge production through sound system practice.

7.) Share findings through on-line, personal and academic dissemination and exhibit.