Pop Conference 2017

Although music videos and late night talk shows no longer have the seemingly universal reach that they did on television only decades ago, both mediums persist and now circulate on the internet. The presenters on this panel explore the visualization of protest within hip-hop and indie pop culture in both a U.S and transnational context. They look at how the mediums of music video, live performance, and fashion in their internet circulation possess the potential to comment on and even intervene in current events, particularly in the wake of increased media coverage of Black death since Trayvon Martin’s murder in 2012 and racism and xenophobia at large during the coverage for the 2016 presidential election. The panelists specifically investigate where sound interrupts and intervenes, making declarations in addition to—or in the absence of—spoken commentary or lyrical enunciations. From digital synthesizers’ and drum machines’ vibrations to an unremarked Jay-Z track to late-night talk show walkovers, the presenters affirm that sound refuses to let artists and audience members forget the histories of suffering (and subsequent creativity) that visual and spoken news commentary so often wants to deaden.

Christine Capetola, “‘Cry and Burst My Deafness’: Blood Orange, Affective Bass Lines, and Viscerally Reconnecting with the 1980s”
Alyxandra Vesey, “Dragging with The Roots - The Walkover and the Limits of Dissent on Late-Night Television”
Meenasarani Linde Murugan, “SomewhereInAmerica: Sounding Brown Atlantics through Hijabi Fashionistas”