Sonic ethnography as artivism: Tekking back fe my mess with AI, dancehall, and patois

My creative practice is a form of research. It's where my identities as a Black anthropologist, poet, and AI artist converge to challenge dominant narratives and create new forms of knowledge. My latest work exists as both a powerful poem and an urgent dancehall track titled 'Tek Back Fe Your Mess.'

A direct call to action for climate and ecosystem justice. Built from my poem # tek back fe your rubbish,' originally commissioned for Medway River Lit 2024, this project lives as both written word and sonic rebellion.

This poem and song are deliberate acts of artivism, fusing art and activism to address the catastrophic failure in our media landscape: the systematic erasure of both the planetary emergency and Black ecological perspectives. My response was to create undeniable visibility using the accessible, global sounds of contemporary dancehall and the authentic, resonant language of Jamaican Patois.

The Theoretical Backbone: Climate Justice Through Sound and Word
My methodology bridges creative and academic practices:

Sonic Ethnography for Ecosystem Awareness: Moving beyond traditional research that privileges text, I practice sonic ethnography through Steven Feld's concept of "acoustemology." Understanding sound as a way of knowing our environment. The track becomes living data, an acoustic ecosystem that demands we listen to the interconnected crises of pollution, climate change, and environmental racism.

Decolonising Climate Narratives: The climate and ecosystem crisis isn't just the "Anthropocene"; scholars like Kathryn Yusoff frame it as the "White Anthropocene" or "Capitalocene" - a direct product of colonial and racial-capitalist extraction. My poem's command to "tek back fe your rubbish" confronts the entire system of environmental destruction. This demand exposes how Western nations like the UK dump their waste in the Global South, forcing former colonies to bear the health and ecosystem burdens of our overconsumption while facing the worst climate impacts.

AI as an Ecological Storytelling Tool (ADN™/MMAT™ in Action): Using Suno AI to generate the music while maintaining complete control over lyrics, musical direction, and vocal arrangements demonstrates my frameworks ADN™ (Anthro-Digital Narratives) and MMAT™ (Masumi Method for Art & Technology). Here, AI becomes a collaborator in climate communication, helping disseminate urgent ecological messages beyond academic circles and into communities most affected by environmental injustice.

The 4 R's of Climate Artivism
This poem and song enact a cycle of environmental resistance:

RESISTANCE: The work resists the silencing of climate emergencies in Black communities. It resists the neo-colonial practice of outsourcing environmental damage and resists corporate AI by weaponizing it for ecosystem justice.

RECLAIMING: I am reclaiming the narrative of Black relationships to land and water. Reclaiming Patois as a legitimate language for climate discourse. Reclaiming technology to tell our ecological stories.

REFraming: 'Tek back fe your mess' reframes "rubbish" from a local issue to a symptom of global ecosystem collapse. It reframes the UK's green image by exposing its pollution exported to vulnerable nations. It reframes climate change as both personal responsibility and systemic failure.

RETAINING: This is cultural and ecological memory work. Using Dancehall and Patois preserves diasporic identity while documenting environmental violence. The poem and song together become a living archive of climate witness and resistance.

Conclusion: We Are the Ecosystem Archive
'Tek back fe your mess' is more than separate artistic pieces, it's an integrated practice-based ethnographic model connecting local pollution to global climate injustice. As both poem and song, it demonstrates that ecosystem protection requires cultural sovereignty and that climate justice demands representational justice.

By leveraging the emotional power of poetry, the visceral energy of dancehall music, and the strategic reach of AI, I've created a counternarrative that must be read, heard, felt, danced to, and acted upon - a unified demand for the UK and the West to finally "tek back" their mess from our ecosystems and our futures.

This is the core of my PhD research and artistic mission: to prove that we are the archive, we are the ecosystem data, and we are the designers of climate justice.

Feld, S. (Acoustemology): Sound as ecological knowledge

Tuhiwai Smith, L. (Decolonizing Methodologies): Reclaiming environmental narratives

Lorde, A. (Sister Outsider): Poetry as ecological insight

Yusoff, K. (A Billion Black Anthropocenes): Race, geology and extraction

Nixon, R. (Slow Violence): The gradual violence of pollution

Whyte, K. (Indigenous Climate Justice): Relational accountability in ecosystems

© 2024 Ms. Michi Masumi. All Rights Reserved.
Frameworks: ADN, MMAT, CADE, MAETT