Barulhinho do vapo vapo: thinking through sound and sonic blackness

Abstract

The idea of "black music" is constantly evoked in the press, academic research, and among fans and artists. But what exactly are we talking about when we think of black music? Is it any and all music played by black people? Or are we talking about music predominantly listened to by black people? Or perhaps it is the case of the most popular musical genres in outskirts of the cities, where the black population has been pushed? This article presents the theoretical proposal of sonic blackness as a means to investigate the issue by breaking away from a view that asserts "black music" as a biological or sociological determinant. In contrast, sonic blackness is configured as a methodological principle to analyze black music as an epistemology and artistic discourse. Dissociating from the logic of representation and representativeness (which would identify black music as music only made by black people and/or predominantly appreciated by black people), sonic blackness brings to the forefront reflections on creative methods, artistic forms, and dark aesthetic imaginations—that is, modes of creation that make racialization a radical formal proposition capable of challenging the musical conceptions of the Western hegemonic white tradition. In this way, we insist on an epistemology of thinking through sound, taking it as a system of thought in its own right, in which new questions and premises emerge in the studies of sound, music, and blackness.