This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a Mellon grant sponsored series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods.

Today’s conversation is with Kojo Damptey, a musician and scholar who is completing doctoral studies in the School of Social Work at McMaster University. His musical work engages with trans-Atlantic sound connections and political meaning, which draws from his academic research in Afrocentrism, indigenous African systems of knowledge, and decolonial theoretical frameworks. In this conversation, we discuss the relationship between study and musical practice, the political meaning of sound, and the significance of art for cultural and social liberation work.