Lectures in Musicology: Jason Buchea, The Ohio State University

Jason Buchea, associated faculty and PhD candidate in musicology at Ohio State, presents “Massamba Diop: Becoming the Sonic Embodiment of the Black Panther." This lecture is co-sponsored by the School of Music and The Ohio State University Libraries.

In 2021, Disney introduced Black Panther In Concert, a live-to-picture stage adaptation of the Oscar-winning score. The premiere at the Hollywood Bowl brought back many of the original African contributors and showcased them live, backed by a full symphony orchestra, as they performed the score note-for-note in its entirety along to the blockbuster film. The performance re-centered Black Panther’s original African musicians, making them visible to an extent that the film itself never could. But as the last note sounded, only one of those musicians would be asked to stay on for the touring production: tama “talking drummer” Massamba Diop. But why Massamba? What made him stand out from all the other equally-qualified African musicians on stage? Drawing on first-hand experience as Massamba’s artist representative and part of the production team, this paper interrogates the myriad factors that helped establish Massamba as the sole featured soloist for Black Panther In Concert. In conversation with emergent discourses in Charisma Studies and Organology, it argues that it was largely Massamba as a charismatic and engaging performer and the distinctive and powerful affect of his instrument, the tama, that led to his outsized presence, first in the film, then the concert. While most reports on the African elements of the Black Panther score tend to emphasize the diversity of the musicians and instruments employed in the production process, I wish to show how it was the (re)performance of the film, rather than the film itself, that revealed the true scale of its most prominent African musical contribution: the tama of Massamba Diop.

Jason Buchea is associated faculty and a PhD candidate at The Ohio State University. He has worked and studied in the diverse worlds of rock, jazz, classical and hip-hop, before becoming a scholar of African music. His research is centered largely around the music of Senegal, and his larger project aims to produce a history of the Senegalese tama drum. His current dissertation project, Performing Wakanda, seeks to document the emergent genre of “live-to-picture film concerts”, and draws on his long-standing collaboration as music director for tama drummer Massamba Diop.