Protest culture : creative practice as socio-political engagement

Abstract

Protest plays a vital role in equality because it empowers people to be civically engaged. Practices such as music have a vital role to play in the culture of protest. This research traces my journey of engagement through musical practice as a form of protest culture starting with my politicization and how it has informed my experiences as a bandleader, composer, bass trombonist, and percussionist. This research also traces the development, composition, recording and performance of musical works created with my two ensembles Hannabiell & Midnight Blue and Ladies of Midnight Blue. The CD Protest Culture represents my music, a retrospective of my work so far. It is an artifact and a piece of practice based research capturing my compositions and representing my knowledge. Autoethnography is a valuable research method for documenting, analyzing and providing a theoretical framework. Black feminist thought, like autoethnography, empowers black women towards political activism because it merges thought and action. My use of autoethnography allows me to focus on the events that led to, and the people that helped me create, my first piece in response to Hurricane Katrina and its unnatural aftermath in New Orleans. By using an evocative autoethnographic framework I am able to show what it is like to function as a Black musician in various contexts, and using an analytical autoethnographic framework allows me to develop theoretical insight to my creative practice. I explore how Black feminist thought, intellectual activism, and intersectionality act as useful theories in understanding my self-defined standpoint. These theories as analytical frameworks help me examine how complex social inequalities are organized and allow me to claim the right to place myself in the center of analysis. My notion of Community Intimacy, which I use as a tool to engage my audience, reveals strong affinities with the African American vernacular tradition and the theory of ‘Call Response’. The compositions and concerts of both ensembles have become the meeting point where these theories and my practice of social justice coexist.