Making a day out of records: Phonographic pedagogies of the Afro-sonic diaspora

Abstract

This article develops the concept of “low-end phonographic pedagogies” through a life-long engagement with vinyl records and the Afro-diasporic music practices of reggae, dub, and dancehall. Approaching my record collection as a counter-archive of vibrational feeling and learning, I explore everyday practices of playing and listening to records as a field of inquiry into the pedagogical potentials of phonographic technologies. Focusing on the dub styles of record production and bass-heavy sound systems that have spread globally from Jamaica since the 1970s, the article engages scholarship in decolonial sound studies and process philosophy to explore the vibratory, affective, and social dynamics of sub-bass frequencies and polyrhythms. This leads to a conceptualization of low-end phonographic pedagogies as situated within a wider continuum of vibratory learning events that stretch from the sub-atomic to the cosmic.