DJ Lynnée Denise: Pass the Peas, Music Migration, Ital Food, and a Black Sense of Place

Music and food are bound up with place and articulations of liberation. Alongside their most precious belongings, people travel with recipes, the sounds of home, and the promise of new tomorrows. Lyrics help us trace the cultural markers of a place and a people. 

This impactful event, hosted at The New School on November 13th, 2025, featured a talk and live demonstration -a mixtape or improvisational intervention- of the sound of Black food. Drawing on Katherine McKittrick’s notion of a “Black sense of place,” DJ and scholar Lynnée Denise took us on an audio-visual journey through the movement of foodways in the lyrics of jazz, blues, reggae, and funk. The exploration connected migration routes and diasporic interconnectedness to how we hear, produce, and preserve taste traditions through music. The Food Studies Program and Food and Social Justice Action Research (FJAR) Lab at The New School hosted this event on Thursday, November 13, 2025 as a part of the FJAR Lab’s “Understanding Food and Environmental Justice through Music” Initiative led by Lab members Kristin and Mike. The event was also a part of our 2025-26 event series “Food and Democracy.”

The “Food and Democracy” event series – curated by the Food Studies Program and the Food & Social Justice Lab at The New School in 2025-26 – creates a space for reflection about democracy and liberation in, and through, the food system. The series has featured scholars, artists, students, faculty, and staff from across and beyond the university. Collectively, the events in the series expand the boundaries of collective learning and action through food, agriculture, popular education, art and civic engagement. The Food and Democracy series in 2025-26 is supported in part by The New School’s university-wide strategic initiative on Democracy and Culture.