Pocodisco: The sonic performativity of grief, grievance, and joy in diaspora

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the intersection between diasporic melancholia, dance, and world music. These phenomena coalesce at postcolonial discos, or public gatherings where political movement takes the form of dance, sound, and eros. I explore the network that connects various times and places to this fantastical dreamland of a sonic postcolonial future and the DJs and producers who keep those records spinning. Focusing especially on the queer and feminist nature of these spaces and sounds, I explore how these artists/activist/curators work outside of institutional contexts as public media archaeologists who excavate and re‐present sounds thought long lost to diasporic communities who occupy a precarious relationship to histories of belonging. These artists contribute to radical acts of space‐making that are not merely fleeting and ephemeral events but instead participate in a legacy of the postcolonial disco, or acts of place‐making with the potential for radical forms of diasporic and postcolonial belonging across space and time.