Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Winner, 2024 Greg Tate Prize, given by the International Association for the Study of Popular Music-US Branch
Winner, 2024 International Association for the Study of Popular Music Canada Book Prize
Honorable Mention, 2024 Alan Merriam Prize, given by the Society for Ethnomusicology
What does sovereignty sound like?
Sonic Sovereignty considers how contemporary Indigenous musicians champion self-determination through musical expression in Canada and the United States. The framework of “sonic sovereignty” connects self-definition, collective determination, and Indigenous land rematriation to the immediate and long-lasting effects of expressive culture. Liz Przybylski covers online and offline media spaces, following musicians and producers as they, and their music, circulate across broadcast and online networks.
Przybylski documents and reflects on shifts in both the music industry and political landscape over the course of a decade: as the ways in which people listen to, consume, and interact with popular music have radically changed, extensive public conversations have flourished around contemporary Indigenous culture, settler responsibility, Indigenous leadership, and decolonial futures.
Sonic Sovereignty encourages us to experiment with temporal possibilities of listening by detailing moments when a sample, lyric, or musical reference moves a listener out of normative time. Nonlinear storytelling practices from hip hop music and other North American Indigenous sonic practices inform these generative listenings. The musical readings presented in this book thus explore how musicians use tools to help listeners embrace rupture, and how out-of-time listening creates decolonial possibilities.
— Mishuana Goeman, author of Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations
"Excavates Indigenous rap’s role in moving us in decolonial directions. Liz Przybylski teases out the confluence of mainstream forces that (re)produce silences while spotlighting artists’ refusals, prompting new expressions of audibility. Sonic Sovereignty gifts us with insight into the intimacies of listening and the political possibility of learning to listen differently."
— Imani Kai Johnson, author of Dark Matter in Breaking Cyphers: The Life of Africanist Aesthetics in Global Hip Hop
"The rich ethnography details the rise of sonic self-determination in contemporary culture through radio broadcasting and live concert events. Writing in smooth, poetic prose, Przybylski asserts that understanding music requires an understanding of its cultural space."
"Liz Przybylski’s Sonic Sovereignty is a remarkably exciting text that employs a multipronged interdisciplinary methodology that emphasizes how musical expression can act as a powerful decolonial force and is one that I wholly recommend."
"Illuminates discussions on the revitalization of Indigenous communities and how these communities continue to demonstrate grit and resilience. Przzybylski’s thoughtful analysis proves mainstream hip-hop culture and listening practices can be decolonized and reimagined to consider a multiplicity of voices rooted in love."
"Sonic Sovereignty is both a scholarly and political achievement. It compels us to listen differently, to explore, and to recognize music as a land where the struggle for Indigenous futures is already being sounded, one lyrical bar and beat drop at a time."