In this episode of Ear Expansion, LaMont Hamilton speaks with Jess Rowley about her path from architecture and librarianship into sonic archival practice and research on Black sonic histories in Victorian Britain. They discuss wax cylinders as early sound-recording technology and Jess’s discovery of the Bohee Brothers, who may have been the first Black artists to record commercially on wax cylinder in Europe, leading to the Brothers Archive Project: a digital archive that gathers ephemera and invites musicians to create interpretive arrangements to revive a lost duet. Jess links this work to lecture-performances exploring wax, stone, and earth as tactile vessels for “sonic rememory,” including Emmanuel Road and Stone Circle Project, emphasizing non-linear, living archives. They also cover Jess’s Ghost Edit Group within the Decolonising Wikipedia Network, which collaboratively edits and builds Wikipedia pages to address gaps and misrepresentations in underrepresented Black British sound histories.
