"The Voices Will Disrupt the Flow": Sound Art, Queer Youth of Color, and the Museum

• In Event: Sound Pedagogies: Theoretical and Material Possibilities for Studying Knowledges in Action

Abstract

Schools constantly and consistently devalue the sonic impact of Black youth (Fordham, 1993, Noguera, 2009). The silencing of Blackness can be heard through the increased surveillance of Black youth in the hallways (Love, 2014) to the multiple ways that Black joy, specifically laughter, is understood as a problem in the classroom (Morris, 2007). Using Moten’s (2003) dialogue on the movement found in the pauses and breaks of music, this paper explores empirical data from a sonic ethnography (Author3, 2017) project to discuss the layers of silencing and subsequent noise experienced by Black queer middle school youth in an urban context.

During the two years that the researcher participated in the context, students decided on and completed two art projects. The first was a series of podcasts that were written, recorded, and edited by students. Students decided to embark on this project to help them think through questions of their developing identities as they were related to the identity of the school. The second was a STEAM project in which students asked to engage to think about their identities as they related to the environment and forms of art. This project produced sculptures that were exhibited at a nationally recognized art museum. While both projects were celebrated by the school’s administration and the art museum as an accomplishment for queer youth who often struggled academically in the building, there was a consistent pushback by both the school and the museum when they were solicited to give students space to display their work. The primary objection was that on one hand sculptures take up more room than the traditionally displayed portrait art and, on the other, that the sounds produced through the podcast were too much of a disruption for educational and/or museum spaces.

Analyzing the process and products of the students’ work showed not only the multiple ways queer students of color were silenced because of structural racism and homophobia but also the agency enacted by students in, against, and through such inter-actions. Similar to Moten’s dialogue on Billie Holiday’s Don’t Explain, where the pause found in Holiday’s musical break also gave rise moving past the break as a sense of resistance to the break itself, students were often positioned to use moments of oppression to hone resistance and agency to make such acts business-as-usual in their schooling and lives. In other words, against the silencing students created spaces for their voices. This is important because findings are resonant with dialogues focused on queer youth depression, self-harm, and suicide by showing how resilience is the movement born in moments of oppression.

Author

• Boni Wozolek, Penn State University, Abington College