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Anticipation: BlackPentecostal Aesthetics and the Sound of the Hammond B-3

 

How are race, gender and sexuality made by the performance of sound, by producing, hearing and/or moving within it? What is the relationship of mechanical objects to spiritual practices and how is that relation a breakdown of the distinction between the human and the machine? In order to move in the direction of these concerns, this presentation will use the Hammond organ, a mechanical object, to ground discussions about the interarticulations of race, gender, sexuality in space, in time. The sound of the Hammond B-3 is imagined as the "sound" of BlackPentecostalism specifically, and of the Black Church generally. At stake is the primary question: How do studies in sound open up the literary to fresh insights for theoretical interventions? Given the prominence of the B-3's sound for African American religious life, "Anticipation" will discuss the ways attention to the sound of the B-3 is generative for thinking of various modes of organization: of text on the page for literary studies, of bodies in space and time for social projects. 

 

Ashon Crawley is a candidate for the English faculty position in Africana Literature.