My Blackness is my strength

Social media post: New PhD Research Output: “Embodied Frequencies: A Sonic Ethnography of Blackness”

Tonight, Inspired by a performance poetry exercise at the 'Common Ground poetry group' (Medway), facilitated by Alby tonight, I transformed my poem “My Blackness is My Strength” into a sonic artefact.

The session helped me explore emotion, tone, and pacing, all of which shaped the instrumental and voiceover.

This piece is now part of my doctoral research:
“A Practice-Based Ethnographic Study of Counternarratives, Culture, and Codes through Art, Activism, Aesthetics, and AI.”

Using AI, I composed original music and layered it with an audio voiceover using the full poem.

This is not just art. It’s ethnography. It’s soul. It’s data.
It’s a counter-narrative in sound. 🖤🎧📖

I am embodying the 4 R's (Resist, Reclaim, Reframe, and Retain), creating music from gospel, blues, and the civil rights movement and the Windrush era. I am resisting erasure, reclaiming my Blackness, reframing the Black British female lived experience, and retaining our UK Black presence through AI-created sound.

Providing an insight into Black British homes in the early 70's when I was a child on a Sunday after church.

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," was said by the writer and activist Audre Lorde. I am challenging this viewpoint; I am using AI to dismantle bias and exclusion.

© Michi Masumi 2024. All rights reserved. This audio work was created under a Suno Pro subscription and includes original lyrics and voiceover; it is protected under UK copyright law and intended for academic and creative dissemination.

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house," was said by the writer and activist Audre Lorde.