Afrosonic Life - by Mark V Campbell (Paperback)

About the Book

"Explores the role sonic innovations in the African diaspora play in articulating methodologies for living the afterlife of slavery"--

Book Synopsis

Afrosonic Lifeexplores the role sonic innovations in the African diaspora play in articulating methodologies for living the afterlife of slavery. Developing and extending debates on Afrosonic cultures, the book attends to the ways in which the acts of technological subversion, experimentation and production complement and interrupt the intellectual project of modernity. Music making processes such as dub, turntablism, hip-hop dj techniques and the remix, innovate methods of expressing subjecthoods beyond the dominant language of Western "Man" and the market. These sonic innovations utilize sound as a methodology to institute a rehumanizing subjectivity in which sound dislodges the hierarchical ordering of racial schemas. Afrosonic Life is invested in excavating and elaborating the nuanced and novel ways of music making and sound creation found in the African diaspora.

Review Quotes

Forgoing the hymns of obduracy, but not avoiding the traumas of the shipped, Mark V Campbell invites us to celebrate the phenomena of Black sonic genius. His deft articulation of DJ culture is more than commendable. From king Tubby to Dilla he unfolds a myriad of groundbreaking techniques pioneered by celebrated producers of many ilks in the transnational African diaspora. Afrosonic Life theoretically explains Black radicalism from a plethora of varied sonic spectrums. Campbell eruditely displays why innovative Black music constantly evolves into new dimensions of poetic dare and spectacular disrupt, enabling Black Joy to function in syncopated communal kinaesthetic antiphonies.


Gathering myriad sonic worlds, suturing musical activity to black life, detailing the beauty of diasporic invention, Mark V. Campbell's Afrosonic Life theorizes black humanity as the practice of making, absorbing, living with, hyping, reworking, interrupting, remixing, turning, and breaking apart sound technologies. This book illuminates how black creativity is a constant reworking of who and what we are-collectively-by centering collaboration, sharing, and the lure of sonic attachments.


With Afrosonic Life, Mark V. Campbell offers an illuminating exposé of African ancestral creativities expressed through turntablism, dub, and remixing as resistant responses to the intersectional forces of dehumanization and commodification typically imposed upon Black artists and their works. Campbell has penned a poignant testament to the resilient artistic ingenuity summoned by Black DJs and dub artists as they challenge hierarchical market structures that are created and protected by Western hegemonies of thought and commerce such as individual rights and intellectual property ownership. Campbell masterfully explains the connection between the traditions of oral storytelling and musical improvisation to the contemporary principles of artistic agency and the reconstitution of Black bodies; artist and audience.

About the Author

Mark V. Campbell is Assistant Professor of Music and Culture at University of Toronto, Canada. His research explores the relationships between Afrosonic innovations and notions of the human. He is founding director of the Afrosonic Innovation Lab and co-editor of Hip Hop Archives: The Politics and Poetics of Knowledge Production (2023) and We Still Here: Hip Hop North of the 49th Parallel (2020).