Mo Nikole

“Toni Morrison said if the book you want to read hasn’t been written yet, you must write it. I’ve lived that as instruction,” Mo Nikole tells GO. Nikole, a sonic memory worker, independent essayist, and writer from Houston, says her practice centers memory, care, and the sacred labor of listening. Curiosity was the compass that led to her work in sonic memory. “I came up through the more traditional DJ format, learned the craft and loved the rooms, but burnout came fast because I was performing ‘presence’ without practicing ‘depth,’” she says. “I needed work that required me to stay, to listen longer, to ask what was underneath the sound instead of what was sitting on top of it.” Nikole founded blkpplchrch, a fellowship honoring the Southern Black aesthetic through sound and gathering, and blkwomanmusiq, a living archive dedicated to listening to and remembering Black women in music through physical media. Her identity as a woman on the LGBTQ+ spectrum has lit her path, and she honors the influences. “Women raised me. Not as abstraction but as fact. The women in my family, in my community, in the music I was handed, they are the reason I know how to listen the way I do. Audre Lorde taught me that silence would not protect me. Pat Parker showed me that a Southern Black queer woman could be direct and devastating and tender all at once. Gwen Avery reminded me that joy is not frivolous; it is resistance.” –MH