Listening to the Echoes of the South Atlantic Listening to the Echoes of the South Atlantic | Page 6

Similar to how Derek Walcott helped us to understand that the sea is history, and in
the spirit of Edward Kamau Brathwaite’s observation that unity is submarine, Ishion
Hutchinson conveys the musical depths of history and the histories that connect
music. His poetry leans towards Walcott remixed in a conscious roots vibe. With
The Ark by ‘Scratch’ he invokes the magic of Lee Scratch Perry’s studio conveyed as
a brilliant allegory about transatlantic history. Although poetry is often compared
to music, and Caribbean oral traditions are inherently musical, the musicality of
Hutchinson’s poetry extends beyond nuances of tone and rhythm. If his poems
speak the language of music, they also convey the cultural, political, and historical
importance of music itself. He begins Sibelius and Marley by telling us that history
dismantles music. He later concedes that music dismantles history. Both possibilities
ring true, echoing the long-lasting implications of what Édouard Glissant describes
as ‘the cry of the Plantation’.
When Music
Dismantles
History
The deep interconnectivity between music and history is the underlying narrative of
this exhibition. Building on the importance of music in relation to what Paul Gilroy
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refers to as “the Atlantic as a system of cultural exchanges” , the exhibition addresses
the impact of music as a collective language of resistance and solidarity. Listening to
the Echoes of the South Atlantic conveys the significance of music as an expression of
cultural experience and history, while also emphasizing the importance of musical
migrations. The videos, sound-based sculptures, installations, and performances are
all connected to the entangled histories of the South Atlantic.
Listening to the Echoes of the South Atlantic highlights interdisciplinary approaches
that reflect a deep understanding of music and its overlapping histories. As the works
in the exhibition convey, music and sound are particularly effective means of bringing
history into contemporary space. The sonic heartbeat of the exhibition is found in
socially engaged and historically conscious art practices that extend beyond the strict
parameters of visual art, music, or performance.
Ever since W.E.B. Du Bois penned his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folks (1903),
the deep interconnectivity between Black musical traditions has been abundantly
clear. More than a century later, the book is still a key resource for inspiration, analysis,
and reflection for anyone interested in the interconnected histories of Black Atlantic
music. The sociopolitical implications of music within the Atlantic triangle has also
been extensively researched by leading contemporary scholars and writers such as
Paul Gilroy, Greg Tate, and Fred Moten, to name only a few. Paul Gilroy in particular
has played a crucial role in conveying the extent to which music moves back and
forth between continents, countries, and cultures within the Atlantic triangle.
Within this context, Édouard Glissant’s observations about ‘the cry of the Plantation’
are quite illuminating. In Poétique de la Relation (The Poetics of Relation) he describes
the vital connection between orality (speech) and music:
It is not just literature. When we examine how speech functions in this
Plantation realm, we observe that there are several almost codified types
of expression. Direct, elementary speech, articulating the rudimentary
language necessary to get work done; stifled speech, corresponding to the
silence of this world in which knowing how to read and write is forbidden;
deferred or disguised speech, in which men and women who are gagged
keep their words close. The Creole language integrated these three modes
and made them jazz.
It is understandable that in this universe every cry was an event. Night in
the cabins gave birth to this other enormous silence from which music,
inescapable, a murmur at first, finally burst out into this long shout—a
music of reserved spirituality through which the body suddenly expresses
itself. Monotonous changes, syncopated, broken by prohibitions, set free
by the entire thrust of bodies, produced their language from one end of
this world to the other. These musical expressions born of silence: Negro
spirituals and blues, persisting in towns and growing cities; jazz, biguines,
and calypsos, bursting into barrios and shantytowns; salsas and reggaes,
assembled everything blunt and direct, painfully stifled, and patiently
differed into this varied speech. This was the cry of the Plantation,
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transfigured into the speech of the world.
These observations extend directly from Glissant’s poetics and philosophy of relation
and are perfectly in tune with his concept of échos-monde, understood as the world of
things resonating with one another. When we think about music within the context
of Glissant’s relational thinking, the historical weight of the call and response that
unites musicians through time and across geographies, the overlaps and crossovers
of music, and the constant back and forth between musical genres, particularly
within the South Atlantic, are all abundantly clear. Glissant’s concept of universal
interconnectivity is nowhere more evident than in relation to music. Glissant returns