Bandung Holograms: The Black Voice as Movement Technology

Black vocal music is a dynamic alchemy of performance, technology, and strategy deployed in political scenes throughout the diaspora. In this essay, Paul Robeson is situated within the immanent spread of decolonization in the mid-twentieth century (in Africa, in particular) as a way to investigate and theorize acts of vocal transport as a type of hologram that places black bodies in circulation with(in) social movement and strategy collectives beyond their physical reach. With this technology at their disposal, black artists throughout the diaspora and the Third World were capable of expanding their zones of influence and solidarity, thereby initiating and maintaining dense intellectualisms and radical praxes.