ALBUM
https://normanwlong.bandcamp.com/album/calumet-in-dub
EXHIBITION CATALOG
Norman-W-Long-Catalog.pdf
CALUMET IN DUB
I hope this message finds you all well. I am very happy to announce that my new album Calumet in Dub is available for download and CD pre-order. Calumet in Dub is a two-channel mix of an eight-channel sound installation exhibited at the Glass Curtain Gallery in Chicago in 2022. The exhibition focuses on Long’s research-based work delving into the ecology and soundscapes of the Southeast Side of Chicago along the Calumet and Little Calumet River area. Inspired initially by a story that aired on the BBC about the relationship of the Little Calumet River to the history of the Great Migration, Long has investigated how housing, labor, and environmental activism has coalesced in this location and how historic figure, Hazel Johnson considered the “mother of the environmental justice movement,” diligently brought these issues to light. Other inspiration was found in Annea Lockwood’s work A Soundmap of the Hudson River, and production techniques found in the works of Dub producers King Tubby and Lee “Scratch” Perry.
Mixed at Dharma Sound, Landers, CA.
Mix recorded by Harout Gulesserian.
Field recordings of Indian Ridge Marsh, SteelWorkers Park, Beaubien Woods, SEPA Station 2 and Little Calumet River. Sonified data collected is from the US Census, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, The EPA.
I want to thank Meg Duguid, Cecilia Vargas, Mark Porter, DEPS Columbia College, Ted Cho, Erin Margaret Day, Derek Monypeny, Yucca Valley Material Lab, Aquarius, Allen Moore, and Sara Zalek. I want to acknowledge the land of Miami, Potawatomi, and Illinois. I want to acknowledge those who escaped slavery and the terror of the South who traveled through work or found their home around the little Calumet.
One of the things I’m thinking about is dub music . . . it ends up really speaking about common experiences because the structure of the music is about things dropping out and coming back in, really reclaiming this whole sense of loss, rupture, and repair that is very common across the experience of black people in the diaspora.
--Arthur Jafa
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