ABSTRACT
This chapter asks what sound studies can contribute to Transnational American Studies and vice versa. It investigates this question through three case studies: cassette recordings of vodou ceremonies connecting diasporic Haitians in Florida, in the 1990s, with their spiritual homeland; prisoners in the Philippines dancing to Michael Jackson and remaking the American pop star into a Filipino cultural product, just as they come to be branded as a global commodity of prison tourism—Cebu’s “Dancing Inmates”; and the nineteenth-century transatlantic travels of the Fisk University Jubilee Singers. Well known as the first African American choral group to sing spirituals in secular public settings, the Jubilee Singers raised money for their historically black college through their tours. More than the money raised, however, the singers also forged a new moral economy. Their travels to Europe and around the Horn of Africa traced the Middle Passage in reverse and in so doing their journey also worked to morally adjust the losses and dehumanization of that route. The chapter more broadly suggests that traveling sounds may be a way to critically remember and engage with the flows of capital, culture, and colonial power.
