Dissertation
Soundscapes of the Black Atlantic: music, memory, recreation, and nationalism in Trinidad calypso, Ghanaian highlife, and the African Diaspora
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
2020
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000005534
Abstract
Much recent historical scholarship has centered on black activists operating transnationally during the interwar and post-World War II periods, in particular how their efforts coalesced in anti-colonial, internationalist, and Pan-African movements in the Black Atlantic during decolonization. Across the British Empire, black journalists, musicians, artists, and other intellectuals and their audiences exchanged ideas in social spaces as they helped create the language and framework for emerging nationalist movements. This project centers on two popular musical genres, Trinidad calypso and Ghanaian highlife, to examine the impact of public and private cultural expressions upon collective memory and the generation of black nationalism across the Atlantic World between World War I and the 1960s. Music and musical performances formed critical sites of negotiation of and challenges to British imperialism and the European civilizing mission.
Music and performance in Trinidad calypso and Ghanaian highlife were integrally connected in the transnational “soundscape” as musicians gathered in London to swap musical styles of the African Diaspora. They exchanged ideas about and criticisms of their shared colonial experience, recycling themes at opportune moments when a memory of oppression, elation, or dismay best served their independence cause. Their experiences as immigrants in the metropole shaped their views on race, gender, and national identity and influenced the vision for a different way forward for black people in the post-colonial period through the creation of new nationalist movements. By researching the movement of musician’s bodies and sounds as they crossed imperial boundaries, I argue that the broader transnational “soundscapes” of the Black Atlantic reveal that recreational activities were critical to the transfer of ideas about and experiences of life under colonialism and can help historians develop a greater understanding of the role cultural production and collective memory played in West African and West Indian movements for independence.
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Details
- Title
- Soundscapes of the Black Atlantic
- Creators
- Daniel Joseph Roth Kotin
- Contributors
- Candice Goucher (Advisor)Susan Peabody (Committee Member)Ashley Wright (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of History
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 204
- Identifiers
- 99901051339301842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation