Sibahle Ndwayana

Fellowship: Rocca Fellowship
Fellowship Year: 2025
Project Theme/Title: Contesting Sonicologies: Nation, Space, and Blackness in Santiago, Cabo Verde
Abstract: My proposed dissertation project emerges from the sounds and popular musical genres of Santiago, Cabo Verde in moments building up to the 50th anniversary celebration of independence. My broad question is how and why do Morna, Coladeira, Funaná, Tabanka, and Batuku sonic practices provide a sonorous stage for struggles over diverse forms of belonging within and outside of the pan-archipelago Kriolu identity in Santiago, Cabo Verde? The aim of this proposed research is to reinvigorate how to understand the matrix of colonial and post-colonial spatiality and the relations it generates, the insurgent sonic forces, and ambiguous racial formations on the islands that have undergone centuries of transformation through different iterations of sonic territorializations. This intended research proposes to add to Black Geographic scholarship in understanding global Blackness and Sound Studies by resounding the importance of how a sonic Black sense of place from Africa is shaped and shapes differentiated modes and spaces of belonging. I propose the methods of soundwalking, field recordings of sonorous sites, listening to histories of listening by participant and non-participant listeners, paying attention to sonic archives such as oral histories, LP sleeves, radio stations. These methods of sound mapping will answer questions concerning the sonorous platforms of contestations over belonging and will resound the mediating and confrontational force of sonic events. My aim is to articulate the determining sonorous forces at scenes of historical racial ordering and spatiality of and by Cabo Verde’s "Blackened" people.