Short Bio: Dj First

DJ Ripley plays experimental street bass sounds from cities all over the world, especially those where immigrants mix music from their hometowns with big bass and drum machines. Rooted in jungle, dancehall, hip-hop, noise and dub, Ripley’s crashed through breakcore into other hybrid sounds including azonto, cumbia, bhangra, baile funk, garage, footwork, grime, jersey club, kuduro, dembow, juke, gqom, bounce, and more. Her eclectic, high-energy set have opened minds and lit up dancefloors across 24 countries on four continents. As Professor Larisa Kingston Mann (Temple University), she recently published Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright and the Reverberations of Colonial Power.

Short BIo: Prof first

Dr. Larisa Kingston Mann is an assistant professor in the Department of Media Studies and Production at Temple University (PA, USA). Her work examines how marginalized communities use cultural practices to create spaces and moments of resistance and negotiation with colonial power. She is especially interested in the technological and legal contexts that allow these spaces to exist, or how people redraw those contexts in moments of creativity and communion. Author of Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright and the Reverberations of Colonial Power, she has also been an underground music DJ (DJ Ripley) for 25 years, playing in warehouses, squats, clubs, basements, festivals, rooftops, back rooms, front yards, ships, houseboats, pirate radio, legal radio and the internet.

Long bio

“Bass music luminary” –The Fader

“Rootical, rally-cry uproar; rhythmic danger in overdrive” –Simon Reynolds

DJ Ripley weaves together street bass sounds from cities all over the world, where immigrants bring their sounds from home and mix them with electronic beats and big bass. She uses music to celebrate people’s experiences across and within race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, highlighting the beauty of interconnecting global stories and rocking them into your body on the dancefloor. Creating space for subversive pleasure: celebrating conscious physical dialogue, using music to challenge mainstream definitions of borders, genres, and more.

Originating from a ferment of jungle, dancehall, hip-hop, dub, and experimental noise in 1995, Ripley branched out into cumbia, bhangra, azonto, baile funk, UK garage, soca, afrobeats, dancehall, kuduru, gqom, dembow, and dark bass sounds of breakcore, jungle, juke, booty bass, grime, jersey club, dubstep, ad more. Her eclectic, high-energy sets result mix deep intuition and fearless sonic innovation on the fly, for dancefloor experiences that welcome all backgrounds, sexualities, races, and genders. She's opened minds and lit up dancefloors across 22 countries on three continents. Originally with Boston’s Toneburst Collective, Ripley co-founded Surya Dub (SF) (and was voted "Best Dance DJ 2009" in the San Francisco Bay Guardian Readers' poll), joined Dutty Artz (NYC), cofounded Heavy (NYC), and Subversion PHL.

As Dr. Larisa Kingston Mann (Assistant Professor, Temple University, & PhD, UC Berkeley Law School), she is an accomplished public speaker and writer on questions of culture, technology, law and power. Her research focuses on the importance of understanding how and when marginalized communities can use cultural practices to subvert dominant systems of power – especially the role of illegal spaces like pirate radio and street parties.  As well she researches the subversive ways that marginalized communities redefine concepts of security and privacy, and intellectual property. Her latest book is Rude Citizenship: Jamaican Popular Music, Copyright and the Reverberations of Colonial Power.