{"id":5853,"date":"2011-10-05T16:57:57","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T20:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=5853"},"modified":"2015-01-07T13:39:46","modified_gmt":"2015-01-07T17:39:46","slug":"the-african-americas-project-the-mystery-of-dem-bow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/?p=5853","title":{"rendered":"The African Americas Project & the Mystery of Dem Bow"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m headed down to the University of Delaware tomorrow for “The African Americas Project<\/a>,” a two-day symposium bringing together quite a mix of artists, musicians, and scholars to explore the connections between Latin America, the Caribbean and the US. <\/p>\n

For my part, I’ll be talking about “Reggaeton’s Afro-American Address,” by which I mean the ways that reggaeton — despite a certain divisiveness<\/a> — is best understood as a genre articulating a powerful synthesis of Afrodiasporic style which directly (and indexically, musically\/semiotically speaking) addresses an Afro-American listening public (and here I use “Afro-American” — an outdated term in the US — in the broadest sense, as a term encompassing Afro-Jamaican, Afro-Puerto-Rican, Afro-Panamanian, and African-American styles and practices). <\/p>\n

I’ll make this argument by revealing the secret of the mystery of the mighty dembow. Here’s a hint: the loop that turns up in the lion’s share<\/a> of reggaeton productions is not sampled from Shabba’s seminal song<\/a>, despite what Wikipedia and everyone else says. Nope. What you think was made in Kingston actually hails from Long Island! But you’ll have to catch the talk, or wait for a forthcoming article, to get the full scoop.<\/p>\n

It’s an honor to be part of a program featuring so many distinguished speakers, among them keynoter Franklin W. Knight<\/a>, a towering figure in Caribbean Studies. You can see the full program here (PDF<\/a>), but let me also note, with some excitement, that another participant is none other than Jamaican filmmaker Storm Saulter<\/a>, who will be screening Better Mus Come<\/a> and other works tomorrow afternoon (and, awesomely, offering comment on the music panel I’m a part of on Friday). <\/p>\n

If you’re in the area, do drop by. Should be a stimulating session. <\/p>\n

Also, how refreshing to be described as a “DJ, technomusicologist, and journalist”! Works for me.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m headed down to the University of Delaware tomorrow for “The African Americas Project,” a two-day symposium bringing together quite a mix of artists, musicians, and scholars to explore the connections between Latin America, the Caribbean and the US. For my part, I’ll be talking about “Reggaeton’s Afro-American Address,” by which I mean the ways […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[400,410,413,422,191,405],"class_list":["post-5853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-academic","tag-af-am","tag-africa","tag-caribbean","tag-ethno","tag-reggaeton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5853"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5863,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5853\/revisions\/5863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wayneandwax.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}