Black Sound Artists: A Living Index
An evolving archive documenting the continuum of Black sonic innovation, ritual, improvisation, and electronic experimentation across generations.
Researcher’s Note:
“This project began as a personal study — a way of tracing my own lineage as a Belizean-American sound artist moving through jazz, noise, electronics, and performance. What emerged was a much larger constellation: a web of artists, composers, improvisers, and movement practitioners who have shaped the language of sound over the last sixty years.
This is built as a research tool, a reference point, and a site of recognition. It honors those who expanded the field long before it had language, and those continuing to stretch it now — across clubs, studios, living rooms, institutions, DIY scenes, and diasporic geographies.
This archive is not definitive. It’s not meant to be exhaustive or academic. It exists as a living system, updated weekly, in conversation with, and not limited to:
- Sound as inheritance
- Technique as memory
- Improvisation as theory
- Technology as lineage
- Listening as cultural work
- Experimentation as liberation
Each name reflects a constellation of practice: ritual music, jazz futurism, noise, modular synthesis, movement research, voice studies, field recording, electronic composition, diasporic rhythm, ambient architecture, and everything in-between.
This work is offered as a resource,
a map,
a place to begin,
and an ongoing commitment to documenting Black sonic innovation with care, precision, and context.”
- Philip Patrick Harper Bucknor, aka TRU
Overview:
The weekly video series “5 Black Sound Artists You Should Know” accompanies this archive; Every week, highlighting five artists — across eras, regions, and practice — creating an index meant to spark curiosity and expand the listening field.
A companion playlist is updated weekly across Apple Music and Spotify (with the note that not all artists work within those infrastructures). For those whose practice lives outside streaming platforms, links to direct pages are provided. Supporting artists directly is encouraged.
This list remains open. The research will continue. New names will be added as the constellation expands.