Relocating to larisa-mann.com

Hello! this site will be archived shortly. Check out the new fancy site for all things Larisa Mann, Larisa Kingston Mann, or Dj Ripley at : http://larisa-mann.com

Estonia/ AOIR

Estonia, for the Association of Internet Researchers' annual meeting. I am talking more about pirate radio and ethnic radio, on a panel: Sonic Publics. My paper is called: Booming at the margins: transmedia practices of pirate/ethnic radio in Brooklyn.

It might seem funny to be at an Internet Researchers' event with a talk about radio, but it makes sense for a couple of reasons. First, radio broadcasting has always worked within a cluster of interrelated practices and scenes, and second, people also call "radio" things like web radio, live streaming, and other online practices. Lastly, I'm always interested in the when people do or do not use a certain technology - like my earlier work on UK pirate radio, I have found that sometimes communities need a kind of control over access and participation in order to build cultural intimacy, and online practices are actually not ideal for this. So that's what I'm going to talk about, in relation to radio audible in Flatbush and Kensington, in Brooklyn.

Summer travels

In mid-July 2017, I attended and presented a paper at the International Association of Media & Communication Researchers annual conference, this year in Cartagena Colombia. The title of my paper was "Savage intimacy, deviant safety: surveillance technology and club culture."

I was lucky to stop by Mercado Bazurto while in Cartagena, although unfortunately this time I did not get to Barranquilla or to see any picós in action (these are the Colombian sound systems). But at the Mercado with a colleague we met some people involved in the scene and had a great time. Especially after we saw this amazing painting!



July-August: I went to London, England to finalize research for my book (tentatively titled) "Decolonizing music : sovereignty and citizenship on the Jamaican dancefloor" - I'm currently talking to Jamaicans in London about how they have created space for autonomous culture-making. It helps that the Black Cultural Archives in Brixton has an exhibit called Black Sound which had lots of interesting and inspiring facts, images, and sounds. In the exhibit, they show a documentary about the legendary Roaring Twenties club on Carnaby street, which was the hottest place for Jamaican sound and the white rock stars who came to, um.. soak it up.. You can watch the documentary here:

50 Carnaby Street: The Roaring Twenties from Lucy Harrison on Vimeo.

I ran into the filmmaker a couple of days later at the Hackney Wick(ed) Open Studios in my old stomping grounds of Hackney/Homerton, and she told me there is another documentary floating around about the legendary Four Aces Club in Dalston (which I heard of as Labyrinth, described by Slimzee here, when I had lived in London). The Four Aces was owned by Newton "Ace" Dunbar, who I dj'd with back in 2013!



Happy to hear he is still out and about, I hope to interview him soon, and with luck to catch a copy of the documentary, which may be held up for familiar reasons. Glad to see my east and south London networks are still alive, hope to get to West London for that side of Jamaicans' history in London soon!

New Position

Officially announcing my new position:

Assistant Professor of Emergent Media in the Media Studies and Production Department of Temple University's School of Media & Communication

A professor on the road

I recently was at Cal State Northridge at the invitation of Dr. Ben Attias, co-editor (with Anna Gavanas and Hillegonda C. Rietveld) of DJ Culture in the Mix: Power, Technology, and Social Change in Electronic Dance Music.

I participated in a symposium entitled "Groove is in the Heart: Researching Dance Music Cultures"
alongside a group of fellow scholars who are also all DJs - a distinguished and interesting crew!  Here's the lineup of participants:

• Anna Gavanas runs the Meerkat Recording Label and publishes on European DJ culture. She is a vinyl DJ who specializes in electronica, dub, dancehall, italo disco and global dance music.
• Larisa Kingston Mann is a Communication Research Fellow at Fordham University. As DJ Ripley she uses music to celebrate people’s experiences across race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, highlighting the beauty of interconnecting.
• Hillegonda C. Rietveld is Professor of Arts and Media at London South Bank University. Gonnie has DJed in dives, clubs and festival tents; she produced her first electronic dance music record in 1982, as member of Quando Quango.
• Dr Rupert Till is Reader in Music at the University of Huddersfield, UK. He is UK Chair of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM). He produces and performs ambient techno, and publishes on dance music culture, celebrity, and sound archaeology.
• tobias c. van Veen is a writer, sound-artist, technology art curator and turntablist. Tobias has edited special issues of Dancecult focused on Afrofuturism and the dub diaspora; his DJ mixes may be found at djtobias.com.

After this, I spent some time doing research in Detroit for a project with the Detroit Digital Justice Coalition, but I also made time to participate in a DJ class organized by the wonderful Mother Cyborg!

And now I am back in New York to write up a draft of my Detroit project to present at the Law & Society Association Annual Meeting in June. New Orleans, here I come!

Spring 2016

Winter 2015

In December, I presented "Bodies and Broadcasting: Pirate Radio and Offline Musical
Community for West Indian Immigrants in New York" as part of a panel: Music on the Margins: Urban Subcultures and the Politics of Sonic Presence in Brazil, France, and the U.S..
This panel was sponsored by the Society for Ethnomusicology Sound Studies Special Interest Group, and took place at the SEM's Annual Meeting in Austin Texas.