Sampling as ethnographic method/remixing Gulu City

Abstract

This article describes the process of producing Gulu SoundTracks, a digital sonic ethnographic project accessible at gulusoundtracks.org, with four Ugandan music producers based in Gulu. The album comprises eight digital audio tracks that tell stories about Gulu musically through the compositional mixing of field soundscape recordings. Using field recordings as samples opened up sampling as a multimodal method for ethnographic storytelling which entails listening that is “vexed” (Weheliye 2005), archival, multiple, and generative. Pointing to insights from the project's creative process, the author explores sound praxis as a modality for amplifying fruitful connections between ethnographic and Afrodiasporic arts traditions. In conversation with others using sound methods in anthropology, ethnomusicology, and digital sound studies, this article stages a dialogue between sound‐based work, critical treatments of Black and Afrosonic cultural production, and experimental ethnography. Sampling as method centers ethnographic imagination and points to critical possibilities field recording holds for anthropological knowledge production.