How Black Music Took Over the World: A Book Discussion with Melvin Gibbs
Sound & Culture Summit
Melvin Gibbs' book How Black Music Took Over the World traces how Black musical innovations traveled, transformed, and ultimately reshaped global sound. For this book discussion, journalist and co-founder of Hearing Things Dylan Green joins Gibbs in a conversation about origins, ownership, and the ongoing future of Black musical creativity. Together, they’ll explore the concept of “influence”, how styles move through communities, technology, media and power, and how credit is assigned or withheld along the way. The discussion invites to hear music not just as entertainment, but as history made audible: rhythms as resistance, genres as migration stories, and artistry as cultural argument.
Photography by Noah Schielen
The Sound & Culture Summit is supported by TIMES (The Independent Movement for Electronic Scenes) and co-financed by the EU.
