Conference Agenda

From 2013 to 2017, as a graduate student in a Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design Ph.D. program, I continued my practice as a hip hop artist, writing, recording, and releasing music in response to my lived realities. I didn’t enroll with the intent to make music for my dissertation project, but as events unfolded in the world — the acquittal of the killer of Trayvon Martin, the Movement for Black Lives, and the right wing backlash — it became apparent that those quotidian expressions, analyses, and criticisms could powerfully respond to scholarly questions occasioned by the sociopolitical moment, its histories, and its futures, namely one asked by Alexander Weheliye as he theorized “Sonic Afro-Modernity”: “What happens once the black voice becomes disembodied, severed from its source, (re)contextualized, and (re)embodied and appropriated, or even before this point?”

Rather than insulating students from the events of the moment, life at the university where I was studying offered a microcosmic manifestation of the state, country, and world. Campus activism mirrored other campuses and spilled into popular discourse. Music was my contribution. I wrote “See the Stripes” as one examination, and it became a grassroots organizational hub on campus, ultimately leading to a nine-day sit-in at the university administration building. After being arrested with fellow students, I offered Owning My Masters: The Rhetorics of Rhymes & Revolutions, a 34-track album including “See the Stripes” and other music I recorded as a student, as one response. I have continued offering responses since with albums written, recorded, and released as a tenure-track professor of Hip Hop in Charlottesville, Virginia from 2017 to the present, still practicing the hip hop traditions that marked my time before academia and my graduate studies.

The intersection of algorithmic curation and musical resistance raises critical questions about how digital infrastructures mediate political discourse in popular music. While streaming platforms present themselves as neutral intermediaries, their algorithmic and curatorial logics often dictate the visibility, reception, and economic viability of politically charged works. This paper examines the structural conditions of algorithmic bias in the circulation of protest music, interrogating how playlisting mechanisms, genre classification, and industry imperatives reframe sonic resistance within capitalist infrastructures.

Focusing on Kendrick Lamar’s Alright and its resonance from the Black Lives Matter movement to Super Bowl performances, Childish Gambino’s This Is America and its fleeting virality, and Beyoncé’s Homecoming as a reimagining of institutional space, this study investigates how algorithmic mediation reshapes political expression. By analyzing the recontextualization of protest music in streaming playlists, I argue that digital platforms simultaneously amplify and depoliticize resistance, leveraging activist aesthetics for commercial gain while maintaining industry gatekeeping mechanisms. The algorithmic life cycle of politically engaged music further raises questions about the ephemerality of digital protest—whether moments of heightened visibility translate to sustained structural impact, or if they are neutralized within the logic of algorithmic circulation.

Bringing together Morrison’s critiques of commodification, Foucault’s concept of biopower, and postcolonial perspectives on sonic hegemony, this paper situates contemporary playlisting practices within a broader history of racialized cultural curation. While protest music has long existed within tensions of commodification and resistance, the rise of algorithmic governance introduces new dimensions of classification, erasure, and rebranding, as platforms dictate how, when, and under what contexts protest music is encountered. Methodologically, this study employs computational analysis of playlist positioning, digital ethnography of streaming trends, and critical discourse analysis of industry framing, illuminating how protest music is algorithmically shaped, strategically positioned, or systematically marginalized. By interrogating the evolving conditions of sonic resistance in digital platforms, this paper challenges dominant narratives of algorithmic neutrality and underscores the ongoing negotiation between cultural activism and the commodification of dissent in popular music economies.

Doechii’s performance at the 2025 Grammy Awards has been lauded for its conceptual harmony, stunning visuals, and Doechii’s artistry. Her inclusion in the short list of woman rappers who have found success in the male-dominated hip-hop scene and her unapologetic flaunting of that success pushes against the concept of “musical genius,” a traditional hierarchical and cis-white-male-centered concept often applied to classical composers of yore. Luong and Myers (2021) trace the exclusive roots of “musical genius” and propose a queer reconceptualization of the concept which decentralizes the lone composer/artist as the locus of music’s meanings. In this presentation, we reflect on Doechii’s performance through a queer genius lens, reading the communally-driven choreography and Doechii’s cooperation with her DJ as a collective act which drastically contrasts with other Grammy performances. Taking this collectivist approach further, we argue that analyzing popular music performances as sites of resistance must consider the political mechanisms enacted on/through all bodies involved in the “intimate relationship between performer and the crowd” (Gilroy 1991). If “to be influenced is to take up a position; it is an act of agency” (Cook 2013), then influential performances move audiences into agency. It is from this embodied position that we consider how Doechii’s Grammy performance challenges and incites audiences to perform acts of resistance.

Drawing an Auslander’s (2019) discussion of musical persona, we liken Doechii’s performance more to a music video than a live performance because of the conceptual cohesion of its contents as well as the amount of collaborative effort afforded to this singular performance. We contextualize references within Doechii’s choreography and costuming and analyze Doechii’s interpersonal on-stage interactions as representations of queer musical genius. Doechii’s performance presents webs of meaning: she references her previous music in “Denial is a River,” does genre-work and acknowledges legitimizing (white) genres while retaining a hip-hop identity, and performs authenticity through the construction of her musical persona. Lastly, reflecting on the commercial nature of the stages afforded to Doechii and Kendrick Lamar, we question the desire to analyze these performances as sites of resistance. What do we want them to do for us?

Although Indonesia has a long history of tolerance and recognition of gender pluralism, this pluralism became dominated by heteronormative and religious understandings of gender enforced by the Dutch starting in the 19th century (Blackwood 2005; Peletz 2009). Currently, sexual and gender minorities are threatened by a new criminal code in Indonesia which was passed in 2022, along with raids directed towards the LGBT community in cities such as Jakarta. Hiding in plain sight in the Central Javanese city of Yogyakarta, the top floor of a clothing store has hosted a twice weekly drag performance called Raminten Cabaret Show since 2014. The shows often begin with performances of traditional Javanese dance and then feature drag acts ranging from American pop stars like Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj to Indonesian popular artists like Via Vallen and Inul Daratista, complete with acrobatics and pyrotechnics. The performers are mostly from the greater area in Java and include women, cisgender gay men, and transpuan, a highly situated Indonesian term that combines the English- language category “transgender” and perempuan, an Indonesian word for “woman” (Hegarty 2021). Audiences are primarily Indonesian, often including women wearing hijab, and usually range in age from 20-60. Although the venue is located in a tourist district which attracts thousands of foreign visitors every year, Raminten Cabaret Show does not cater primarily to the tourist gaze. I posit that this venue, especially in the context of increasing threat towards the LGBT community in Indonesia, serves as both a site of resistance and a safer space for euphoria and expression.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I examine the ways that the Raminten Cabaret Show and these performers work to unsettle heteronormative and religious conceptions of gender, derived from both Dutch colonial legacies and growing practices of fundamental Islam in Indonesia. In theorizing this space, I draw on what José Esteban Muñoz, after Bloch, called a “concrete utopia.” A concrete utopia, counter to abstract or unachievable concepts of utopia, is simultaneously grounded in the immediacy of the real while nurturing visions of the future.

This presentation examines closely the music and lyrics of Russian singer-songwriters Monetochka, from her 2024 album Molitvy. Anekdoty. Tosty. (Prayers. Anecdotes. Toasts.), and IC3PEAK, from their 2025 album Coming Home, whilst accounting for its political context. This repertoire, born out of personal émigré experience, gives voice to the inner monologue of Russian citizens, who are also anti-Putin but are not able to say so publicly given the country’s war censorship laws in place since 2022. On January 2, 2023, Monetochka was added to the Russian official “foreign agent” list for her statements. In September of 2024, a criminal case was opened against her, citing evasion of “foreign agent” duties and preventing her return home from Lithuania, where she now lives. IC3PEAK have also relocated. My analysis demonstrates how these artists protest the Russo-Ukrainian war in a sonically gentle manner and their soft vocal delivery often borders on speaking and even whispering; notably, this chilling calmness marks a stylistic departure for IC3PEAK, who are known for their aggressive yells but now present a subdued version of their old selves.

Quiet and whispered vocals can establish an atmosphere of intimacy in songs’ narrative (Nobile 2022, Moore 2005). I show how these wistful dissident songs differ from the Western trend of “whisperpop” (Holmes 2023), and how they are delivered to new vast geographies of the Russian diaspora. These songs are protests that highlight problems (Murphy 2023) yet performed from a safe physical distance. I argue that the intimacy heard on these two albums is a special kind of diasporic intimacy that is created specifically by artists living in exile, directed at both émigrés and those, who remain in Russia. For both listener groups, the diasporic intimacy signals a farewell to the motherland––this may be the literal location that was left behind (Boym, 1998) but also the bygone time period’s distinctive lifestyle details. The image of Russia before the war endures in the listener’s mind only. Three years into the war, these artists are indefinitely dispersed and are exhibiting sounds of exhaustion in their new songs, as they uphold their message of resistance.