Vital Atmospherics: Sonic City-Making in Africa

ABSTRACT Recent concern for noise in African cities has placed the sonic environment at the center of questions of cityness. This article explores the broadcast of loud music as part of a vital atmospheric which makes the city and sustains everyday life in Gulu, Uganda. I consider everyday Acoli sound concepts wo (noise) and dwan matek (loud sound) with and against concepts of “noise” as it is enacted by environmental regulations concerned with the criminalization of loudness. In so doing, this work brings together sonically rich accounts of African cities and the social density of African sonic worlds with attention to a global South “politics of loudness” and Afrodiasporic sonic geographies. Building from a series of ethnographic encounters, and written in experimental form, this work challenges racialized assumptions embedded in efforts to regulate noise, exploring instead how loud sound generates possibilities for social connection.