Borrowing the old Black colloquialism meaning “ordinary” or “same old”, Drylongso: An Ode to the Southern Black Landscape is an acknowledgment and celebration of Black everyday life in the American South. This multi-generational collection of recorded phone conversations from Hackett’s family in rural Prospect, VA comprises a rich array of the under-recognized yet customary ways Black folks maintain and care for land, space, and people. Presented as an audiovisual collage, Drylongso asks what can be learned by documenting ordinary Black existence, as told in Black folks’ words.

While these conversations hail from families in rural Virginia—nearly 200 miles from Washington, DC—Drylongso invites you to discover your own personal connections to the stories’ underlying themes of family, identity, and perseverance.

Conversation with Penny

Conversation with Lilly

Conversation with Liana

Conversation with Mamie

Conversation with Claudette

Conversation with Cara

Part soundscape, part oral history, A Baptism Story incorporates a conversation with my mother, Penny, about her baptism in a creek in rural southern Virginia. Her story braids narratives of Black kinship, relations with land, and religiosity. Sounds include my own field recordings from Boston (bell-like rings from a pile driving machine on a construction site, water splashing in the Charles River, and walking through brush on the Charles' riverbank), and processed loops from the conversation itself (my mom’s singing of hymns, dial tones, etc.).

Album image made with AI, using Midjourney.

A Baptism Story

Part soundscape, part oral history, A Baptism Story incorporates a conversation with my mother, Penny, about her baptism in a creek in rural southern Virginia. Her story braids narratives of Black kinship, relations with land, and religiosity. Sounds include my own field recordings from Boston (bell-like rings from a pile driving machine on a construction site, water splashing in the Charles River, and walking through brush on the Charles' riverbank), and processed loops from the conversation itself (my mom’s singing of hymns, dial tones, etc.).

Adapted from a longer version for nightly listening at the HOLD installation at Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Album image made with AI, using Midjourney.

curryhackett

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