How struggles over Black sound have shaped Oakland's culture, politics, and geography.
Chicago has house. Detroit has techno. But Oakland slaps.
On Loop explores the role of Black dance music and sonic politics in recurring struggles over race and space in Oakland, California. Insisting on the centrality of sound in everyday social movements—from the mobilization of funk music and boogaloo dance during Black Power to the policing of the Hyphy movement in the 2000s—Alex Werth argues that Black dance music is not merely a soundtrack to or record of urban resistance. Rather, its very sound waves have animated looping clashes over development, dispossession, and Black freedom. Through studies of downtown nightclubs, Lake Merritt, and the Eastmont Mall—geographies rarely considered, yet critical to Oakland's culture and politics—Werth reveals how the liberatory sonic politics of funk, hip-hop, and hyphy rap have been met with a repetitive "war on nuisance."
As both a means of empowerment and a magnet for policing, Black dance music has transformed not only Oakland's nightlife, but also its streets, parks, and neighborhoods. On Loop is a rousing encounter with the sound that moves urban life.
Table of Contents:
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface: Slaps and the City
Introduction: On Black Sonic Politics
1. Oakland Blues: Migration and Melancholy
2. Social Movements: Sounding the Call for Black Power
3. Into the Crack: The War on Nuisance
4. Black Noise: Crime, Grime, and Rhyme
5. The Sideshow: Getting Hyphy at the Margins
6. The Club: Bureaucracy and Banishment
7. Before BBQ Becky: On Loop at Lake Merritt
Conclusion: Black Sound, Unbound
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Alex Werth is a geographer, DJ, and housing justice advocate.
Review :
"Sound is inseparable from the movements it becomes defined by—that’s what Werth argues in his dive into the struggles around race and freedom in Oakland, soundtracked to Black dance music."
“The book’s title On Loop refers to the musical rhythms of funk and rap as much as the spinning of a sideshow car, a DJ’s record, a walk around Lake Merritt and the cyclical nature of policing. Through a sound-studies lens, Werth equates sonic presence, and taking up space in its many forms, with Black liberation.”
“Davey D talks with writer and geographer Alex Werth about his new book On Loop: Black Sonic Politics in Oakland and how sound, race, and power collide in the town’s history. Werth explains that although he was trained by anthropologists, his grounding in geography helps him track how Oakland as a place has been made and remade through Black migration, music, and struggle.”
