Phonographic Memories
About the Book
Phonographic Memories is the first book to perform a sustained analysis of the narrative and thematic influence of Caribbean popular music on the Caribbean novel. Tracing a region-wide attention to the deep connections between music and memory in the work of Lawrence Scott, Oscar Hijuelos, Colin Channer, Daniel Maximin, and Ramabai Espinet, Njelle Hamilton tunes in to each novel’s soundtrack while considering the broader listening cultures that sustain collective memory and situate Caribbean subjects in specific localities. These “musical fictions” depict Caribbean people turning to calypso, bolero, reggae, gwoka, and dub to record, retrieve, and replay personal and cultural memories. Offering a fresh perspective on musical nationalism and nostalgic memory in the era of globalization, Phonographic Memories affirms the continued importance of Caribbean music in providing contemporary novelists ethical narrative models for sounding marginalized memories and voices.
Reviews
“A resonant and remarkable contribution to the fields of Caribbean studies and literary sound studies. [Hamilton’s] substantive interdisciplinary work interweaves critical insights from neuropsychology, ethnomusicology, and literary studies with meticulous close-reading and close-listening analyses of musical styles, performance genres, and recording technologies in a multiplicity of Caribbean contexts. In harmony with the practice of liyannaj that Hamilton relates in her analysis, this important and impactful work will appeal to audiophiles and bibliophiles alike."
-- Julie Huntington, author of Sounding Off: Rhythm, Music, and Identity in West African and Caribbean Francophone Novels
“[This] study attests to the importance of music in the region in both personal and national senses of identity and suggests original ways of interpreting its representation in fiction.”
-- Peter Manuel, author of Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae
In the Classroom
In the Fall of 2019, Professor Tsitsi Jaji taught a split undergraduate-graduate student seminar at Duke called “Sound and Double Consciousness” that centered around the question of how sound across media could help illuminate W.E.B. Dubois’s concept of “double consciousness.” To take learning into their own hands, student collectives developed a series of collaborative digital projects that focused on specific texts important to critical race and sound studies. Each project focused on one of three texts: Njelle W. Hamilton’s Phonographic Memories: Popular Music and the Contemporary Caribbean Novel, Shana Redmon’s Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity in the African Diaspora, and Zora Neale Hurston’s Tell My Horse.
Check out the wonderful student work inspired by Phonographic Memories.