Alaba Ilesanmi
University of Minnesota
Alaba Ilesanmi is Assistant Professor of (Ethno)Musicology at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His research examines the intersection of music, sound, history, and culture, exploring themes of (post)coloniality, globalization, and politics. He specializes in global Black music, sonic histories, expressive cultures, and transnational exchanges. His interdisciplinary scholarship engages conversations across (ethno)musicology, Africana studies, Black studies, diaspora studies, religious studies, popular music studies, and sound studies. Committed to public-facing scholarship, he also develops artistic, community-engaged, and public humanities initiatives that connect academic research with broader publics. Most recently, he co-curated Music in a Time of Crises, a public series examining the role of music in responding to political upheaval, social unrest, and community healing.
Talk Information:
Sounding Afterlives: Spectral Acoustemologies and the Sonic Life of the Dead in Contemporary Global Black Music
September 18, 2026 | 9:00 AM
In this presentation, I examine the presence and agency of the dead in contemporary musical practices. I ask: How are intermundane relationships between the living and the deceased sonically invoked and sustained? How do sonic practices enable the dead to participate as collaborators in contemporary musical performance? Building on Steven Feld’s concept of acoustemology—the relationship between acoustics and epistemology—I introduce spectral acoustemologies as a framework for understanding sound as an epistemic practice of encountering, “knowing,” and “being with” the dead. I argue that sound acts as an expressive mode of engaging posthumous agency and sustaining relationships across the boundary between life and death. Ultimately, using Beyoncé’s 2018 Coachella performance as a primary case study, I unpack how spectral presences, agency, and labor of the dead are mobilized on stage and how musical performance can become a site of intermundane collaboration.