Description

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Musical representations of wildness in an era of revolution

Recipient of the 2020 Lewis Lockwood Award from the American Musicological Society

What are the uses of musical exoticism? In Wild Music, Maria Sonevytsky tracks vernacular Ukrainian discourses of "wildness" as they manifested in popular music during a volatile decade of Ukrainian political history bracketed by two revolutions. From the Eurovision Song Contest to reality TV, from Indigenous radio to the revolution stage, Sonevytsky assesses how these practices exhibit and re-imagine Ukrainian tradition and culture. As the rise of global populism forces us to confront the category of state sovereignty anew, Sonevytsky proposes innovative paradigms for thinking through the creative practices that constitute sovereignty, citizenship, and nationalism.

About the Author

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MARIA SONEVYTSKY is an assistant professor of music at the University of California, Berkeley. She has performed widely, with several bands including The Debutante Hour, Anti-Social Music, and Zozulka, and produced an album called "The Chornobyl Songs Project" on Smithsonian Folkways in 2015 with Ensemble Hilka. She has also taught Ukrainian village songs, accordion, and more.