Leaning to Georgia: Arts-Based Educational Research and 21st-Century Problems of the Sonic Color Line

• In Event: Sound Arts, Hip-Hop, and Arts-Based Educational Research: A Performatively Corrective Counter-Factual

Abstract

“The problem of the 20th century is the color line” (Dubois, 1903, p. 9). This statement comes from the second chapter “Of the Dawn of Freedom” which has been quoted immensely. Jennifer Lynn Stoever’s (2016) book The Sonic Color Line: Race and Cultural Politics of Listening utilizes Dubois’ in an analysis of erasure and silencing of Black voices in 19th century literary text. Stoever’s broader point identifies literature as the first recording device of sound. One text she utilizes is The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845).

Stoever extracts and analyses Douglass’ recollection of his enslaved Aunt Hester being raped and beaten by the overseer. It is this point in which Stoever situated this recollection as a doubled witnessing. Doubled in that she witnesses Douglass witness the deepest depths of dehumanization enacted through slavocracies by the ultimate violation of his family member, Aunt Hester. It is Aunt Hester’s scream described by Douglass which elevates his consciousness and emboldens his responsibility to Black folx though the scourged back (McKittrick, 2014). Stoever’s major point here is that it is the sonic relationship, not simply the words of Douglass’ narrative, but rather the intentionality with his words in service to describing Aunt Hester’s exclaiming of trauma which help him go deeper into the insidiousness of slavery. Altogether, Stoever’s criticism centers on the problematic glossing over the depth of meaning that sonic relationship Douglass writes which in turn equate to continued mistreatments of Black folks through intentional sonic violence of silencing and listening.

Additionally, varied analyses of the expansive acts of sonic violence are presented in the scholarship of Participating Author (2017) and Boni Wozolek (2022). However, where Stoever’s discourse picks up Dubois’ analysis of the problematic color line and expands it to the sonic color line in analysis of Black sonic relationships in 19th century literature, my discourse starts in the 21st century to futurity with focus on Arts Based Educational Research (ABER), the sonic color line, and the possibilities.

In the 21st century, ABER struggles with the problem of the sonic color line. This is not to say that ABER is a doomed project. Rather, I identify the issue of the sonic color line in ABER as an invitation to consider the futurity of rich possibilities for learning through deep dives into sounded mediums with attention to Black music focused on sonic relations coming from hip-hop culture. Composer, pianist, singer, rapper, beat maker, and producer Georgia Anne Muldow is the focus in my discussion to consider the expansiveness of these Black sonic relations, whose sonic works I look to in both identifying and challenging ABER’s sonic color line. Muldrow, having recorded an expansive catalog of albums, also has extensive list producing credits which include Erykah Badu and Yasiin Bey (Mos Def). Her being a Black woman also presents a series of narratives of creating alternate cartographies of Black sonic spaces to thrive and be (Gilroy, 1993; Hill-Collins, 2000). Overall, I situate Muldrow as providing insight into ABER’s 21st century color line while cultivating improvisational ethics (Author, 2018).

Author

• Reagan P. Mitchell, University of North Carolina School of the Arts