STONO: An audio-ritual
2022
Awarded Outstanding Work in Critical Race Performance Studies by Performance Studies International, 2025
This recorded audio piece was presented in multiple venues and forms the basis for the forthcoming full-length live performance, STONO, as discussed in my research statement. The piece was co-commissioned by No Credits Productions for the Destination Freedom podcast and the San Francisco Queer Cultural Center for the National Queer Arts Festival. The development of the piece was supported by a residency with the Orchard Project Audio Lab and research funding from University of California, Berkeley.
I wrote the music, lyrics, and spoken text; I sang the majority of the vocal parts and delivered the spoken narrative; I played percussion, mandolin, guitar, and various synthesizers. I also remotely engineered recording sessions with three additional musicians (Rafael Maya, drums, electronic percussion; Safiya Fredericks, voice; Kristen Mitchell, voice, hot water bottle) and mixed/produced the recording.
STONO: An audio-ritual is an original composition exploring the 1739 Stono slave rebellion through the voices of its beyond-human participants. While typically depicted as a suppressed insurrection, this piece asks: Is there another story? To find answers, listeners are guided to commune with ancestors, water, mushrooms, guns, and the Kongolese Virgin Mary. Combining music, spoken text, and field recordings from the historic rebellion sites, STONO imagines a more expansive and surprising story about that fateful episode, a space in which revolution extends beyond racial politics, human temporality, and material space.
The backbone of STONO: An audio-ritual is a body of songs developed through ceremonial engagement with the beyond-human in rebellion sites and sung from their perspectives. These songs combine African diasporic roots forms (ring shout, bomba, rumba, batá), electronic and synthesized instruments, and field recordings of the more-than-human voices (raw audio, digitally processed, and transcribed onto other instruments).
STONO: An audio-ritual runs approximately 33 minutes. You are encouraged to listen with headphones. Click to view the libretto.
Moments of note:
13:59-16:26 – In “Bug Ball,” humans-turned-ancestors warn the Stono rebels about the spiritual cost of violence. The instrumentals feature the Afro-Puerto Rican bomba rhythm yubá, typically associated with elders and intense spiritual energy. While at first the repeating chant of “heads will swing” seems like a rallying war cry, as the song progresses it becomes a lament as departed spirits mourn the harms both victims and perpetrators suffer in acts of violence.
8:57-10:38 – In “Is It the Time?,” the ground outlines the hardships weakening white colonizers and prods the rebels to take action. “Time” draws on the African American work song tradition and is a call and response with the repeated refrain “oh my soil.” Woven through the track are field recordings of plots of ground in Stono rebellion locations and instrumental motifs transcribed from mosquitoes in a former rice plantation.
30:50-32:58 – “Ibo” is a lullaby that places the Stono story into a broader map of colonial reckonings. This piece incorporates recordings of the ocean in northern Florida, the presumed destination the rebels never reached. The instrumentation is devoid of drums, as they were banned in the 1740 slave codes passed in the wake of the Stono uprising.
Presentation History
September 2022 — Slave Dwelling Project conference: The Stono Rebellion and the Atlantic World (Charleston, SC)
August 2022 — KGNU radio (Denver/Boulder, CO)
July 2022 — Destination Freedom podcast via the Broadway Podcast Network (online)
June 2022 — National Queer Arts Festival (online) — View program
Co-commissioned by No Credits Productions, LLC for Destination Freedom and Queer Cultural Center for the National Queer Arts Festival. A co-production of No Credits Productions, LLC and Queer Cultural Center.
