Hemispheric Soulscapes – Afro-Latin Soul Music and the Rise of Black Power Cosmopolitanism

BOOK LAUNCH, Film SCREENING, VINYL SESSION
26.06.2025 19:30
WITH Matti Steinitz & Dom Filó
LANGUAGE The event takes place in English with Spanish & Portuguese
FREE ENTRY Donations welcome
ACCESS SAVVY is accessible by wheelchair

BOOK
Dr. Matti Steinitz [Center for InterAmerican Studies, Bielefeld University]
Afro-Latin Soul Music and the Rise of Black Power Cosmopolitanism - "Hemispheric Soulscapes" between Spanish Harlem, Black Rio and Panama
2025, DeGruyter-Brill

FILM
Emílio Domingos
Black Rio! Black Power!
2023, 75 min, OmeU
Documentary on Brazil's 1970s Soul movement follwed by a Q&A with Dom Filó, Black Rio protagonist

Dancefloor
Afro-Latin Soul & Funk sounds presented by DJs Radio Vampiro, Bongo [La Regla] & Matatu [Black Atlantic Beatz]

We cordidally invite you to a night dedicated to the inter-American dimensions of soul music. After several years of research on how the popularization of soul contributed to the emergence of Afro-Latin soul scenes and Black Power-inspired movements across the Americas in the 1960s and 1970s, Dr. Matti Steinitz invites friends, colleagues, and anyone interested to celebrate the publication of his book Afro-Latin Soul Music and the Rise of Black Power Cosmopolitanism - "Hemispheric Soulscapes" between Spanish Harlem, Black Rio and Panama.

Inspired by Arjun Appadurai's model of "ethnoscapes" and "mediascapes" (2000), Steinitz will introduce the concept of "hemispheric soulscapes" as a way to make sense of how soul as a genre, a style, and a discourse connected Afro-descendant youth in the US, the Caribbean, and Latin America across national, cultural, and linguistic boundaries, providing them with a diasporic lingua franca of black assertiveness in local struggles against different forms of race-based oppression and exclusion. Drawing on oral history interviews with musicians, DJs, and activists, the multi-sited study traces the emergence of Afro-Latin Soul scenes among New York's Puerto Rican community, the descendants of Afro-Caribbean labor migrants in Panama, and Rio de Janeiro's black youth. Arguing that the creative appropriation and translation of sounds, symbols and slogans associated with the US African American freedom struggle in Latin American contexts was a means to break with homogenizing identity discourses such as latinidad, mestizaje and democracia racial, Steinitz proposes to conceive of the transnational dialogues related to Afro-Latin Soul as a manifestation of Black Power cosmopolitanism.

After a short presentation of the book, the evening will continue with the screening of the highly acclaimed documentary Black Rio! Black Power! (2023) by Emílio Domingos which provides unique insights into how DJs, activists, and soundsystems turned Rio de Janeiro into the site of Latin America's most vibrant soul scene in the 1970s. As a very special guest, Dom Filó - engineer and founder of Black Rio's leading Soul Grand Prix soundsystem and director of CULTNE, Brazil's largest digital archive and first TV station dedicated to black culture, politics, and history - will be present for a discussion on the role of bailes soul in raising consciousness and forging a sense of connectedness with the US Black Power movement when Brazil was ruled by a military dictatorship

In keeping with the theme of the night, the event will conclude on the dancefloor with DJs Radio Vampiro, Bongo [La Regla] & Matatu [Black Atlantic Beatz] spinning vinyl records that reflect the transcultural dialogues between African American and Afro-Latin popular cultures in the 1960s and 1970s: Funky Soul and Afro-Latin barrio sounds from the US, the Caribbean, Central and South America!