DeForrest Brown, Jr. is an Alabama-raised, ex-American rhythmanalyst, electronic musician, and curator whose writing explores the links between the Black experience in industrialized labor systems and Black innovation in electronic music. His work has appeared in Artforum, The Wire, Triple Canopy, NPR, CTM Magazine, and MixMag, among many others, and his debut book, Assembling a Black Counter Culture, was published by Primary Information in 2022. 

Through his Speaker Music audio production project, Brown channels the African-American modernist tradition of rhythm and soul music as an intellectual site and sound of techno-vernacular expression, releasing three albums on Planet Mu between 2019 and 2023 called Of Desire, Longing, Black Nationalist Sonic Weaponry, and Techxodus. He has performed or presented work at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Paris+ par Art Base, London’s Camden Arts Centre, Unsound Festival in Krakow, Sónar Barcelona, Performa in New York, and elsewhere. Brown has also taught courses on the history and new media uses of Afrofuturism in music at The New School and Princeton University. In 2023, he co-curated HOPE, an international group exhibition presented by Museion Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano-Bozen as the final installment of the TECHNO HUMANITIES trilogy.

As of May 2024