The Soul of Black Folks

by Dr Kwame Phillips

My recent work has explored the framework of ‘haunting/haunted,’ most notably in Echoes of Care which is a collaborative multidisciplinary performance that combines sound, voice, movement and ecological interventions to explore haunting and Black ways of care. The Soul of Black Folks similarly tunes into the sonic, emotional and historical echoes of past and present struggles for Black liberation. Inspired by W.E.B. Du Bois’ seminal 1903 work The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (and remixing its title), the mixtape uses sonic curation to explore the proximate and synergistic forces of haunting presence and the haunted present as it relates to Black sonic expression amidst racialized lived experience.

As curated sound, rather than only referencing a dark and melancholic audio soundscape that might be expected of the ‘gothic’, I have interpreted the gothic through Kobena Mercer (2010), Leila Taylor (2019) and Tashima Thomas’s (2022) articulation of the Afro-Gothic, that is as a trans-historical ‘aesthetic and theoretical framework that addresses the everydayness of black horror and environmental racism’ (Thomas, 2022)^[i]. What is heard is horror expressed through historical context, through lyrical content, through theme and through feel. Gothic texture is both synthesized and symbolized.

Thomas further argues that the Afro-Gothic is an expression of an ‘elastic horror’, fluent in its ability to flatten the panic associated with great terror and challenge the universality of fear and anxiety paradigms. The Soul of Black Folks is curated to create and extend a gothic space of redemptive, transformative simultaneity that collapses the temporal, spatial and psychic distances between a then and now, between Black bodies in spirit and in corpus, between those who have died and those who hold them dear.

1. Cover

Source:        Unidentified Man, Woman and Child, [ca. 1875], Alvin D. McCurdy fonds, Archives of Ontario

Effects:      Selected mosaic pixelation in Photoshop

Notes: Family photographs operate as archives of histories, especially significant for Black diasporic families where old photographs evoke the tension between painful memories of ancestral trauma and the yearning to maintain familial connections and commemorations. Old photographs are also a common trope in horror films, and the cover art of The Soul of Black Folks plays with these different connotations. I found this old archival photograph and pixelated the faces to further play with the notion of ghost horror narratives, the anonymity of the family photographed and the historic familial erasure resulting from the Transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans.

 

2. Field Recordings

Name and details: 080103-000.wav

• Location: Monument for Joanna Vassa (11 April 1795 – 10 March 1857), Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington, London
• Time and date: 13:57, 27 September 2025
• Equipment: Zoom H4n

Name and details: 080103-001.wav

• Location: Burial location for Olaudah ‘Gustavus Vassa’ Equiano (n.d. 1745 – 31 March 1797), American International Church (formerly Whitfield’s Tabernacle), Tottenham Court Road, London
• Time and date: 16:57, 27 September 2025
• Equipment: Zoom H4n

Effects:        VST plugin: Ambient Reverb 7 (Decay Time 100 seconds, Mix 100%, Max damping, max diffusion, max depth)

Notes: I wanted a constant ambient sound to play throughout the mixtape to evoke an omnipresent ‘spirit’ haunting the music. I initially thought about making this the sound of the ocean, using recordings from the west coast of Africa and from the north coast of Haiti, to trace the path of slave ships, and to reference bodies of water as ‘embodied sites where memory and history converge’ (Wardi, 2011)^[ii]. I instead decided to research slave burial sites in the UK and made a saved map. From this map, I chose to work with the burial location of writer and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano and the gravesite of his daughter Joanna Vassa, both in London. Using these as sites for field recordings allowed for explicit references to enslavement, liberation, history and family. I adjusted the recordings sonically to become ambient drone sounds.

3. Vocal Samples

Sources:             The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois

Read and performed by Kwame Phillips

Recorded using a modified CB Echo Mic

Mikey Dread – Dread at the Controls (1979)

Effects:       VST plugin: Ambient Reverb 7 (Decay Time 15.5 seconds, Mix 33.1%, adjust damping, max diffusion, adjust space); Pitch Shift: -1 semitone; Multiband Compression: Indie Lo-Fi preset

Notes: I settled on using Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk as the basis for vocal samples throughout the mixtape. Working with a classic Black text from the early 1900s maintained the ancestral tone, and the presence of the word ‘souls’ in the title felt thematically resonant. Initially, I sampled a LibriVox audiobook but then decided to use my own voice, which I recorded using a modified CB microphone with a built-in echo circuit. I focused the recordings on Du Bois’ discussion of ‘Sorrow Songs’ and his own ‘sampling’ practice of using poetry and verse as epigraphs before his chapters. These Sorrow Songs are songs that express the suffering and unjust treatment of enslaved African Americans. He describes them as the ‘singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people’.^[iii]

The Mikey Dread sample is a tag that I use on all my mixtapes. It recalls Jamaican DJ culture (where DJs or ‘Toasters’ lyrically chant over songs) and Hip Hop mixtape culture (where DJ tags are short audio signatures used for branding), which are sonic aesthetics and histories that my work is shaped by.

4. Tracklisting

The songs chosen represent a contemporary exploration of Sorrow Songs and the Afro-Gothic through popular music. All songs are by or prominently feature Black artists and evoke not only sorrow, haunting, horror and death, but remembrance, love, resistance and survival.

1. Lamin Fofana – Tune of Departure (2022)

Mix details: volume reduced -3.9dB

Vocal sample: ‘Of the Sorrow Songs’ excerpt (0:36)

Lamin Fofana is a Sierra Leone-born music producer and artist, known for instrumental electronic, experimental, ambient music that explores themes of displacement, identity and his own migrant experience. I was motivated to use Fofana’s work after being invited to a concert he was headlining and was inspired by how his ambient music filled the space and hung in the air. ‘Tune Of Departure’ sets the tone for the mixtape as sound ‘rippling with dread’ (ANOST, 2023)^[iv]. The song is preceded in the mixtape by 40 seconds of reverbed ambient field recording from Joanna Vassa’s burial site and by Du Bois’ introductory word on Sorrow Songs.

2. Q Lazzarus – Goodbye Horses (1988)

Mix details: volume reduced to -3.9dB; trimmed from 4:31 to 2:43

Vocal sample: ‘The Forethought’ excerpt (0:25)

‘Goodbye Horses’ is most known for being featured in the 1991 psychological horror film The Silence of the Lambs. I included the song here partially because of that connection, but much more because of its content, with lyrics that explore ‘transcendence over those who see the world as only earthly and finite’ (Garvey, n.d.)^[v]. The dark synth-pop song features vocals by the enigmatic Diane Luckey, known professionally as Q Lazzarus, who disappeared from the public eye soon after the song had achieved cult status. The song is preceded by another Du Bois sample that speaks to the Sorrow Songs as having ‘welled up from Black souls in the dark past’.^[vi]

3. Spahn Ranch – Lo & Behold (1987)

Mix details: volume reduced to -5.4dB; trimmed from 3:34 to 2:15; fade out linear value 0

Vocal sample: ‘Of the Coming of John’ excerpt (0:19)

Spahn Ranch was a 1980s Detroit underground electro-industrial group, featuring the rhythmic foundational work of drummer Odell Nails. The band’s music is often called ‘gothic minimalism’, a description perfectly encapsulated by the song ‘Lo & Behold’. The song is preceded by Du Bois’ use of a stanza from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem ‘A Romance of the Ganges’ which constructs a spiritual black aquatic reading of the piece.

4. Moor Mother – The Myth Hold Weight (2019)

Mix details: volume reduced to -3.9dB; fade in linear value 0; trimmed from 3:58 to 2:40

Vocal sample: ‘Of the Passing of the First-Born’ excerpt (0:22)

I saw poet, musician, and activist Moor Mother at the Church of Sound, St James The Great in 2024 in an intense and powerful performance that blended spoken word, electronic music and free jazz, and challenged the audience to confront the legacy of racism. Thematically, by subverting the anthem ‘America, the Beautiful’, ‘The Myth Hold Weight’ moves the mixtape from minimalism to a more confrontational multi-layered soundscape, that uses sound collage and distorted vocals to create a sense of ‘temporal collapse’ (Deymeyer, 2023)^[vii]. This song is paired with an excerpt from Du Bois that references the passing of his young son and how the spectre of death calls to him from a dreamless space.

5. Doug Wimbish – Perplex (1999)

Mix details: volume reduced to -6.6dB, lowered to -14.6dB, raised to -7.2, lowered to -14.4dB, raised to -6.6dB; trimmed from 5:11 to 2:41; fade out linear value 19

Vocal samples: ‘Of the Wings of Atalanta’ excerpt (0:34) and ‘Of Alexander Crummell’ excerpt (0:21)

Bassist Doug Wimbish is primarily known for his roles in rock band Living Colour and funk/dub/hip hop collective Tackhead. ‘Perplex’ is taken from his solo album Trippy Notes for Bass and is an atmospheric, slow groove with ambient, dub and spiritual influences. It provided an ideal underscore for the two vocal samples that speak about injustice as a brooding, wandering force.

6. Azu Tiwaline and Forest Drive West – The Pitch (2024)

Mix details: volume reduced -3.9dB; trimmed from 3:54 to 1:55

Vocal sample: ‘Of the Sons of Master and Man’ excerpt (0:14)

Azu Tiwaline is a French-Tunisian producer, who blends Berber music with dub, trance and techno. ‘The Pitch’ is taken from her collaborative EP, Fluids in Motion, with UK artist Forest Drive West, a project that engages with dub techno and electronica. ‘The Pitch’ uses a beatless soundscape to create a hypnotic ambience that I used as the backing for another Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem that Du Bois cites in his chapter ‘Of the Sons of Master and Man’.

7. Vanessa Bedoret – Eyes (2024)

Mix details: volume reduced to -6.9dB and raised to-3.9dB; trimmed from 4:38 to 3:11; fade out linear value 19

Vocal sample: ‘Of the Faith of the Fathers’ excerpt (0:48)

Vanessa Bedoret is a London-based French violinist, vocalist and composer who integrates classical music with experimental production to shape intimate yet cinematic compositions. ‘Transition’ is a wordless track that builds an ethereal and airy tension, juxtaposing quick reverberations of a beat with intermittent synths and ‘screeching violin glissandos’ (Kim, 2024)^[viii]. I paired the song with Du Bois’ citation of Fiona MacLeod’s poem ‘Dim Face of Beauty’. MacLeod was the feminine alter ego of writer William Sharp who believed himself ‘possessed of another spirit; under the spell of this other self’, a tension that matches with Bedoret’s song, Du Bois’ articulation of double consciousness, and with the articulation of the mixtape’s theme (Untermeyer, 1920)^[ix].

8. Nina Simone – Pirate Jenny (Live at Carnegie Hall, New York) (1964)

Mix details: volume reduced to -2.3dB; trimmed from 6:39 to 3:12; fade out linear value 0

Vocal sample: ‘Of Our Spiritual Strivings’ excerpt (0:54)

This notion of tension is intensified further by American singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone’s powerful live rendition of ‘Pirate Jenny’. Taken from Bertolt Brecht’s play The Threepenny Opera, Simone relocates the song from Victorian London to ‘this crummy southern town, in this crummy old hotel’, and changes the character from a sex worker to a maid immediately infusing her interpretation with racial politics and civil rights commentary. This interpretation turns Jenny’s original revenge fantasy into a menacing social justice act where oppressors are sent to their deaths ‘Right now / Right now!’ The song is followed by Du Bois’ use of Arthur Symons’s poem ‘The Crying of Water’, which maintains the aquatic narrative from ‘Pirate Jenny’, and layers in themes of longing and despair.

9. Kendrick Lamar – Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst (2012)

Mix details: volume reduced to -11.9dB and raised to-3.9dB; trimmed from 12:04 to 2:30; echo effect and fade out linear value -12

Vocal sample: ‘Of the Sorrow Songs’ excerpt 2 (0:25)

Death (and being remembered after death) is also explored in Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar’s 2-part, 12-minute opus ‘Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst’, in which he voices ‘When the lights shut off and it’s my turn to settle down, my main concern – promise that you will sing about me’. The selected verse ends with the narrating character being shot mid-sentence while stating ‘…and if I die before your album drop’. As such, death unnervingly intrudes into the song itself, depicting the pervasiveness of Black death. The finality of this narrative is paired with Du Bois’ final epigraph from The Souls of Black Folk, a version of the Negro spiritual, ‘I Know Moon-Rise’ that portrays the inevitability of death and acceptance of mortality.

10. Mirel Wagner – No Death (2011)

Mix details: volume reduced to -3.9dB; fade in linear value 27; trimmed from 3:09 to 2:25

Corporeal finality is transcended in Mirel Wagner’s haunting gothic folk song ‘No Death’. The Ethiopian-born singer uses ‘spare guitar and breathy vocals as she strums a lament that is equal parts defiant and tragic’ (Reese, 2012)^[x]. Wagner sings ‘No death can tear us apart’, implying that it is not death that is inevitable, but transcendence of it, finding romance and sentimentality in heartbreak and fatalism.

11. Miles Davis – Little Church (1971)

Mix details: volume reduced to -14.0dB and raised to-3.9dB; trimmed from 3:17 to 2:07

Vocal sample: ‘Of the Passing of the First-Born’ excerpt 2 (0:26)

The macabre tone is maintained in the second excerpt taken from the ‘Of the Passing of the First-Born’ chapter. Du Bois describes the morning of the burial day of his son as ‘blithe’ and describes the living world’s carefree presence amidst death and tragedy as ‘the wraith of Life’. This is followed by jazz legend Miles Davis’s ‘Little Church’, a gentle yet cacophonous piece that is both serene and evocative and mirrors Du Bois’ description.

12. The Roots – Finality (4th Movement) (2011)

Mix details: volume reduced to -18.5dB

Vocal sample: ‘The Afterthought’ excerpt (0:50) and ‘Dread at the Controls’ (0:04)

The mixtape ends with Du Bois’ afterthought backed by hip hop band The Roots’ instrumental track, ‘Finality (4th Movement)’. As Du Bois implores the reader to hear his cry and not let his words fall ‘still-born into the world-wilderness’, The Roots offer a concluding poignant, sombre and unsettling piece that uses a viola solo and dissonant piano chords to evoke death and the futility of life (Lopes, 2023)^[xi]. The song ends with a final, unsettling piano chord that sonically resonates to the end. If this chord is a warning, included in this warning are — as the Du Bois excerpt highlights —’ the ears of a guilty people [that] tingle with truth’. The mixtape ends with 30 seconds of reverbed ambient field recording from Olaudah Equiano’s burial location.

^[i] Thomas, T. (2022). An Ecocritical Look at Flint’s Water Crisis and Afro-Gothic Liquidity. liquid blackness, 6(2), pp.38–59. https://doi.org/10.1215/26923874-9930283.

^[ii] Wardi, Anissa Janine (2016). Water and African American memory : an ecocritical perspective. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

^[iii] Du Bois, W.E.B. (1903). The Souls of Black Folk : Essays and Sketches. Chicago Mcclurg.

^[iv] Unsettling Scores – Lamin Fofana – ANOST (2023) Anost.net. Available at: https://www.anost.net/release/AD58/lamin-fofana%2Funsettling-scores (Accessed: 18 October 2025)

^[v] Garvey, W. (n.d.). Goodbye Horses.

^[vi] Du Bois, W.E.B. (1903). The Souls of Black Folk : Essays and Sketches. Chicago Mcclurg.

^[vii] Demeyer, H. (2023). Moor Mother’s Scream. [online] New Critique. Available at: https://newcritique.co.uk/2023/09/15/essay-moor-mothers-scream-hans-demeyer/ [Accessed 18 Oct. 2025].

^[viii] Kim, J.M. (2024). Vanessa Bedoret – Eyes. [online] Resident Advisor. Available at: https://ra.co/reviews/35991 [Accessed 18 Oct. 2025].

^[ix] Untermeyer, L. (1920). Modern British Poetry. University of Michigan Library.

^[x] Reese, N. (2012). This Is Our Jam: Mirel Wagner, ‘No Death’. [online] Refinery29.com. Available at: https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/this-is-our-jam-mirel-wagner-no-death [Accessed 18 Oct. 2025].

^[xi] Lopes, K.M. (2023). Take Back Thursday – A Concept Analysis of The Roots’ ‘Undun’. [online] Doors at Seven. Available at: https://www.doorsatseven.org/todays-new-music/undun-the-roots.

Biography