Music Is a Black Technology
To commemorate Juneteenth and the launch of Decompress, we convened a powerful panel discussion featuring electronic music pioneers DJ Heather, Daygee Kwia, Eddy Andre Samy of Paperwater, and Greg Stryke Chin about the role of electronic music as a tool for social change. Moderated by Founder & CEO of Data for Black Lives, Yeshimabeit Milner.
Read more about Decompress: https://d4bl.org/decompress
Music is a Black Technology: A discussion on the history and future of electronic music as a tool for social change.
Talking drums were the first social media – percussion instruments that could communicate complex messages across miles. Music and technology are inseparable to Black people: from Jamaican sound systems to the turntables, drum machines, samplers, and synthesizers of the hip-hop generation. Techno and house movements teach us the power of sound as a technological response to the conditions people faced at the time, amplifying voices unheard.
In the first panel of the Music is a Black Technology series, we invite voices that map the vast genres and geographies of the diaspora. Together we answer the questions: How has the role of Black people in shaping electronic music been erased? What new possibilities are unleashed when we reclaim electronic music as a Black technology? How can we use innovations of the past as a blueprint for social change right now?