Benjamin Barson on Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons

This is John Drabinski and you’re listening to Conversations in Atlantic Theory, a podcast dedicated to books and ideas generated from and about the Atlantic world. In collaboration with the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy, these conversations explore the cultural, political, and philosophical traditions of the Atlantic world, ranging from European critical theory to the black Atlantic to sites of indigenous resistance and self-articulation, as well as the complex geography of thinking between traditions, inside traditions, and from positions of insurgency, critique, and counternarrative.

Today’s discussion is with Benjamin Barson, who teaches in the Department of Music at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. He is a practicing saxophone player who has worked with Fred Ho and other musicians dedicated to merging musical practice with radical politics. In addition to a number of musical pieces, journal and other publications, he is the author of Brassroots Democracy: Maroon Ecologies and the Jazz Commons, published by Wesleyan University Press in 2025. In this conversation, we explore the origins of the project, its wide historical and political vision, and the place of brass brand music in political mobilizations past, present, and future.