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The Global South Drum Machine & Sampler is the first production instrument from Sonic Liberation Devices — a drum machine and sampler built around regionally sourced sounds and non-traditional tuning systems from across the Global South, developed in direct collaboration with musicians, organizers, and ethnomusicologists.

Sonic Liberation Devices began in 2024 as a graduate thesis at NYU, grounded in a belief that music technology can serve community rather than extraction. Its first instrument, the Palestine Drum Liberator, was a battery-powered drum machine built in solidarity with Palestine: braille-labeled keys, open-source code, archival documentation, and regionally sourced sounds, finished in the colors of the Pan-African and Congolese flags. Its politics are reflected in its design.

Through NEW INC’s incubator program, SLD grew from a solo research project into a collective of five and spent the past year expanding that framework into a durable production instrument. Where the first device was a prototype, the Global South Drum Machine & Sampler is built to last — made to be held, played, shared, and rebuilt by the people who use it.

The instruments are one part of a larger project: a worker-owned cooperative where artists collectively own resources and shape the futures they build. The website is live now, and each pre-order helps fund that cooperative and the work ahead.

The Global South Drum Machine & Sampler is a limited first run of 250 instruments, available now for pre-order at $1,600.