Overview
Deonte Harris, Ph.D., is an ethnomusicologist whose research interests include global Black studies, diaspora studies, the study of space and place, and the anthropological study of value. His work interrogates the social, cultural, and political impacts that Caribbean international migration, and the formation of a postwar Caribbean diaspora, has had on geopolitics and global popular culture since the second half of the twentieth century. These broader interests animate his current book-in-progress which focuses on the globalization of Caribbean-styled carnivals, with London’s Notting Hill Carnival arts scene being his primary site of research. In addition to excavating the significance of the Notting Hill Carnival, its various meanings, impacts, and value within the local context of London/UK among Black Britons of Caribbean heritage, the book also illustrates how London’s scene facilitates the transnational circulation of people, cultural goods, and music between the Caribbean, US, Canada, and the UK vis-à-vis carnival on an annual basis. New research for his second book is also underway, which examines Black music and art through the lens of what political scientist Cedric Robinson has called the “Black Radical Tradition” (BRT). While scholars of the BRT have emphasized its intellectual, political, and literary histories, this book will demonstrate that the BRT also exists as a musical tradition. Calypso, reggae music, and Jamaican sound system culture in Britain will be used as case studies in this book on the musical BRT.