Rude Citizenship

Larisa Kingston Mann, assistant professor of media studies and production at Temple University, has worked as a performing DJ and event organizer for more than twenty years.

For more information about Larisa Kingston Mann, visit the Author Page.

"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

"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

"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

"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

“Refusing the (re)colonizing gaze, Larisa Kingston Mann departs from ethnomusicological approaches that reduce the practices of peoples of the global South to spectacle and evaluate them in terms of their distance from the North. Her self-reflective ethnography examines Jamaican music production, reception practices, and spaces on their own terms and shows that if these spaces are exilic because of their marginality, they are also sites of autonomy and alternative forms of sovereignty.”—Boatema Boateng, University of California, San Diego

“Placing ethnography in conversation with media and legal history, Larisa Kingston Mann’s study of the theory and practice of copyright law in Jamaica comprises a significant analysis of the understudied intersection of music, law, and legal cultures in the Caribbean. Important reading in a diverse set of fields.”—Alejandra Bronfman, University at Albany, SUNY