Transounding: Listening for Black Queer Lusophone Diasporas will be released by Duke University Press on Jan 5, 2027, as part of the Dissident Acts Series, edited by Diana Taylor and Macarena Gómez-Barris. The book analyzes Lusophone popular music audiovisual compositions and performances as sites of Black, queer, and diasporic contestation and worldmaking. Silva introduces trans tessituras as expressions and analytics for understanding queer being, desire, and diaspora through the music of Pabllo Vittar, Linn Da Quebrada, Jup do Bairro, Ney Matogrosso, António Variações, Fado Bicha, Titica, Puta Da Silva, and Judas, as they sound out across a vast Luso-Afro-Brazilian transatlantic terrain.
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A second monograph currently in development and tentatively titled Queer Acousmatics: Listening in Difference, reimagines acousmatic sound – sound in which the source is unknown or unseen – as a mode of relationality that undermines cisheteronormativity by disavowing visual prejudices and sonic tropes. It examines different Lusophone soundscapes and repertoires across time to ask how we might hear differently through a praxis of sonic uncertainty.
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A Portuguese-language book, A Desejar Variações, is in production for Brazilian press Sexo da Palavra (São Paulo), part of the special series Coleção Vidas Sequestradas, edited by César Braga Pinto, with a projected release in Fall 2027. The book is an intimate reflection of Portuguese performer and LGBTQ+ icon António Variações’s music and its resonances for a queer Luso-American identity.
Daniel da Silva, Ph.D. 