Rude Citizenship - by Larisa Kingston Mann (Paperback)

About the Book

"In this deep dive into the Jamaican music world filled with the voices of creators, producers, and consumers, Larisa Kingston Mann-DJ, media law expert, and ethnographer-identifies how a culture of collaboration lies at the heart of Jamaican creative practices and legal personhood. In street dances, recording sessions, and global genres such as the riddim, notions of originality include reliance on shared knowledge and authorship as an interactive practice. In this context, musicians, music producers, and audiences are often resistant to conventional copyright practices. And this resistance, Mann reveals, goes beyond cultural concerns. Because many working-class and poor people are cut off from the full benefits of citizenship on the basis of race, class, and geography, Jamaican music spaces are an important site of social commentary and political action in the face of the state's limited reach and neglect of social services and infrastructure. Music makers organize performance and commerce in ways that defy, though not without danger, state ordinances and intellectual property law and provide poor Jamaicans avenues for self-expression and self-definition that are closed off to them in the wider society. In a postcolonial world, how creators relate to copyright reveals how people will play outside, within, and through the limits of their marginalization"--

Book Synopsis

In this deep dive into the Jamaican music world filled with the voices of creators, producers, and consumers, Larisa Kingston Mann--DJ, media law expert, and ethnographer--identifies how a culture of collaboration lies at the heart of Jamaican creative practices and legal personhood. In street dances, recording sessions, and global genres such as the riddim, notions of originality include reliance on shared knowledge and authorship as an interactive practice. In this context, musicians, music producers, and audiences are often resistant to conventional copyright practices. And this resistance, Mann shows, goes beyond cultural concerns.

Because many working-class and poor people are cut off from the full benefits of citizenship on the basis of race, class, and geography, Jamaican music spaces are an important site of social commentary and political action in the face of the state's limited reach and neglect of social services and infrastructure. Music makers organize performance and commerce in ways that defy, though not without danger, state ordinances and intellectual property law and provide poor Jamaicans avenues for self-expression and self-definition that are closed off to them in the wider society. In a world shaped by coloniality, how creators relate to copyright reveals how people will play outside, within, and through the limits of their marginalization.

Review Quotes

"By questioning the fundamental underlying assumptions in Western conceptions of musical and sonic composition with examples from Jamaican popular music, Mann's provocation in Rude Citizenship asks readers to question their understanding of auteurship, originality and notions of musical talent."--Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture

"Rude Citizenship is thought-provoking and raises questions for future investigation regarding how disadvantaged populations from Jamaica and other postcolonial societies resist existing power imbalances by engaging with musical practices to flourish."--International Journal of Communication

"Interesting, thought-provoking and stimulating. It will guide you through a journey to discover the beauties and secrets of Jamaican music, from the mento of the 50s to the modern era."--Sonic Street Technologies

"The concept of the original . . . crystalizes much of the important work Rude Citizenship does: understanding Jamaican practices of music-making on their own terms; emphasizing how, in this context, creativity is understood as relational; and working through the legal tensions that result. The book is of interest to scholars approaching music through cultural studies of law, contextually-specific conceptualizations of creativity, or 20th and 21st century Jamaica."--Popular Music

"This book presents scholars and music lovers alike with a powerful interdisciplinary investigation of how Jamaican popular music enables the island's oppressed classes to resist the predations of postcolonial society. Using the lens of copyright law and its ability to define culture as property owned by individuals, Larisa Mann exposes the inadequacies of copyright's legal framework to render visible Jamaican popular music practices."--New West Indian Guide