Sonic Sovereignty: Hip Hop, Indigeneity, and Shifting Popular Music Mainstreams

What does sovereignty sound like?

Sonic Sovereignty explores 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. 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 in the last fifteen years: just as the ways in which people listen to, consume, and interact with popular music have radically changed, large public conversations have flourished around contemporary Indigenous culture, settler responsibility, Indigenous leadership, and decolonial futures.

Sonic Sovereignty encourages us to experiment with the temporal possibilities of listening by detailing moments when a sample, lyric, or musical reference moves a listener out of time. Przybylski maintains that hip hop and many North American Indigenous practices, all drawn from storytelling, welcome nonlinear listening. 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.

Author: Liz Przybylski
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 07/25/2023
Pages: 328
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.01lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.00w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9781479816927

About the Author
Liz Przybylski is Associate Professor in the Department of Music at University of California, Riverside and is the author of Hybrid Ethnography: Online, Offline, and In Between (SAGE, 2020). Her research appears in Ethnomusicology, the Journal of Borderlands Studies, and IASPM Journal, among others. She is an awardee of the National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship.