Escuna Sound System 

Annual celebration since 2016

​​

Escuna Sound System is an art project born as a celebration that explores black performances, aesthetics and the embodied diasporic experience of apprenticeship with sound system cultures echoing in the Black Atlantic history and survival. Drawing on presence, sound, voice, and movement as forms of knowledge and resistance, this annual boat party is infused with affection.

 

It anchors itself on the re-signification of the scream as a radical gesture that disrupts normative ways of understanding, expressing and engaging with the world. In this case, screams that express happiness and become part of an unannounced ritual of Black liberation. 

​

Since 2016 this annual celebration has allowed countless racialized and dissident bodies to break circles of unconscious transgenerational trauma and pain from the African Holocaust, resulting in both death and rebirth. Accessibility not only to sail but to dive into the sea for the first time embracing the present, and healing the future with the re-entry of enjoyment and being enjoyed.

I created Escuna Sound System, and since its first edition, it has been made in collaboration with Bahian artist Sista Kátia. Together, we sparked a movement. From that first event, where we transformed Todos os Santos Bay into a uniquely curated musical experience, several similar schooner celebrations have followed, adopting our format.

​

Photos by Juh Almeida, Nara Gentil, Marina Baggio and 4vero

Video by Iury Taillan