In this lecture, DJ Lynnée Denise will discuss what she refers to as (A)BlackQueerSound, a makeshift queer archive  compiled over her twenty-year deep listening practice as a DJ and public scholar. The archive comprises albums, liner notes, films, record label histories, and dance floor stories presented and performed through sound and text over the past decade.  (A)BlackQueerSound is rooted in traditional styles of Black American music, including gospel, soul, funk, disco, and the Jamaican reggae subgenre known as dub. Those responsible for producing and engaging this body of work at the time of its prominence are those who witnessed the earliest stages of what poet Melvin Dixon refers to as "pandemic time" to describe the AIDS crisis and those who mourned, testified, and created cultural works across disciplinary borders as part of the Black Gay Cultural Rennaissance in the 1980s.

This lecture will highlight noteworthy turntable-based musical developments in Black queer spaces in New York, Chicago, London, Detroit, and Johannesburg. Each of these cities produced sub-genres of music born out of Black DJ culture, echoing Jamaican sound and social practices while amplifying subaltern forms of mourning rooted in pleasure.

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