America’s Skill Issue

“All empires fall eventually.” The rapidly accelerating pace of American politics in the 2020s serves as an important signifier of the impending fall of Western hegemonic power. Trump’s securing of the presidential office and congress, contrary to liberal cope, did not result from the proposed policies of either side. Partly driven by significant changes in social media algorithms, which prioritize reactionary positions and engagement over accuracy, we have entered the era of post-truth. Notably rooting itself in the mainline political discourse during covid as misinformation regarding vaccines, fabricated realities proved themselves to be more effective tools of ideological manipulation than actualities. Discernible narratives such as those surrounding immigration, transgender rights or Chinese influence completely overshadowed the Democratic campaign’s indifference towards real-world issues, resulting in a big win for groypers.

As fascism becomes decreasingly disguised in popular rhetoric, so does the true nature of American rule. Bringing self-destructive policies like proposed tariffs to the forefront of Republican hyperbole, the imminent decline of American exceptionalism reaches its final stage of totalitarianism before collapse. Bigoted Twitch streamers and cryptopilled YouTube celebrities being recognised in Trump’s victory speech on election night or Elon Musk coining the Department of Government Efficiency, named after a 4chan dog whistle, the hyperstitiousness of the principal political disquisition has reached peak absurdity. However, anticipating the great flop era in US history, the power vacuum will need to be filled immediately. The global arena only has one other player – China.

China Was Built Differently

The ‘five-thousand-year-old civilization,’ projected to economically surpass the US in the near future, has become the prime focus of socio-economic speculation by analysts worldwide. As a living governance experiment, the civilization state is characterized by its highly systematic policies. Modern China is not run by politicians, it’s run by economists. In its commitment to preserving historical traditions while advancing societal and technological progress, the country’s development outcomes differ significantly from those of Western, neoliberal models. Neo-Confucianism serves as a foundational aspect of Chinese society, prioritizing harmony, historical continuity, and collective advancement over the individualistic ethos of the West. As a result, their developmental factors require a distinct analytical approach. Scholars and artists, including Lawrence Lek, Nick Land (with his concept of ‘Neo-China’), and Zhang Weiwei (author of The China Wave: Rise of a Civilizational State), offer insightful speculative thought on the future of this prominent ancient civilization.

Quoting Lawrence Lek from his video essay Sinofuturism: “Copy everything. Respect for historical tradition is a main principle of Chinese aesthetics.” This perspective aligns with a broader cultural attitude in China, where a lack of strict adherence to global copyright laws has fostered a culture of resource sharing. As Lek notes, “Nothing is sacred. Authorship is overrated. Copyright is wrong.” If you ask an American company how their products are made they will laugh at you, in China they will give you a factory tour. This shared knowledge, combined with state capitalist practices and central planning, has enabled the country to achieve unprecedented technological development. While US companies focus on slapping an AI label on everything, BYD is making cheap electric cars.

The C-Wave

Alongside dominating the global manufacturing scene, Chinese culture has joined the vast collection of exports from the country. Much like the K-wave of the past two decades, China’s cultural phenomena have swept over Western social media, although this time it’s different (I’m gonna lose all the ‘nothing ever happens’ bros here). Many recent Western internet trends have originated from Chinese platforms like Douyin and Xiaohongshu. Some of them, such as 0.5x zoom surreal storytelling, have emerged organically, while others, like the hyper-aestheticized Douyin makeup, reflect a direct influence. Recently, numerous accounts have been reposting videos from Chinese platforms on Instagram and TikTok. Some popular Douyin creators have also begun sharing their content on Western platforms. Notable examples include the famous rural snack store videos featuring “往事只能回味” playing in the background and the abundance of “Ke Mu San” dance videos.

The reception of Chinese viral trends reflects a growing curiosity about a society that has long been misunderstood or stereotyped in Western media. There is a meme circulating social media: “Chinese TikTok is like watching interdimensional cable”, which perfectly encapsulates our reaction to the influx of Chinese viral content. One creator worth mentioning is @prognozpogodi69, who shares edits of a variety of videos from Chinese platforms with English narration by different cartoon characters. These characters, such as the well-known “yapdollar,” do not provide direct translations of the original content but instead offer satirical interpretations. Occasionally, the text-to-speech narration slips back into Mandarin or stutters, spitting out gibberish. His content reflects the Western reception of Chinese videos: we find the content entertaining because it feels alien and random to us, as we often don’t understand the language or the cultures.

Due to the clear division between Western and Chinese social media ecosystems, many users are encountering content outside the American echo chamber for the first time. Catching some by surprise, this content is more gay, more feminist, and more advanced than the general Western perspective on China would have us believe. The unserious nature of Chinese social media has opened up space for gay fantasy stories or furry content, providing an outlet for queer expression in the mainstream. In a lot of short form videos, women are also commonly presented as more independent and dominant, than in Western countries. Unfortunately, feminist and queer theory is simultaneously being actively suppressed on most Chinese platforms.

It’s worth mentioning, that this wave of content has also exaggerated the already big problem of sinophobia. Reels have been overrun by a staggering amount of racial slurs or otherwise racist narratives for some time. With the influx of Chinese content, we’ve also seen an increase of culturally inappropriate or plain racist memes targeting Chinese people.

May God Bless You With Mountains of Silver and Gold

What happens on Douyin now, will happen on TikTok later. The accelerationist nature of Chinese society can give us a glimpse into the public’s response to next stages of technological development. A decade ago you were farming rice, now you’re in the same field, farming clicks.

The rise and gamification of online shopping pioneered on platforms like Taobao and Pinduoduo, serves as another clear example of this techno-evolutionary echo effect. Western companies noticed the effectiveness of integrating built-in mobile games into e-commerce apps and implemented similar features. Many of these rely on quasi-gambling mechanics, fueling shopping addictions among the newly established middle class (xiaozi). The popularity of curated livestreaming in vertical video formats is starting to gain traction in a similar fashion. On Xiaohongshu, the majority of live videos revolve around presenting products for sale, primarily makeup or clothing. Some streamers have begun implementing new formats, such as coin-pushing machines for beauty products or “3-second shopping,” where each product is showcased in a speedrun-like manner.

Is It Over?

Historically, China has been a major influence in East Asia, a region often referred to in modern times as the Sinosphere. Encompassing countries like Japan and Korea, the Sinic world has historically been more successful in exporting its culture to the West than China itself (China’s skill issue?). This disparity can be attributed partly to the country’s past poverty and partly to its political tensions with Western nations. However, when comparing the current C-wave to its Korean and Japanese counterparts, China’s influence extends beyond popular culture, style, or fandoms. With its geopolitical significance as a global superpower and manufacturing hub, China’s impact penetrates much deeper into the fabric of Western society, reflecting the nation’s own evolution.

Analyzing the mechanisms of Chinese social media can not only help us speculate on the future characteristics of Western platforms, but also give us insight into the future of algorithms of control. To provide an analogy, the U.S. government has historically tested technologies, such as less-than-lethal weapons on occupied nations first, before deploying them against its own population. Similarly, now American companies are observing China’s online population control tools, and alongside the U.S. government looking to implement similar tactics. A good example of this practice is Meta’s crackdown on anti-genocide content or the widespread fedposting after the United Healthcare CEO shooting. Contrary to narratives of American exceptionalism, mass surveillance and digital control are not unique to China.

For the longest time, we viewed the internet as an americentric entity controlled by big tech companies like Google and Meta. While Westerners make up less than a fifth of the world’s population with internet access, we colonized online spaces and distanced ourselves from other cyberspaces. When a big player like TikTok enters our territory, we seek to regain control or destroy it. It’s difficult to predict whether a global shift in power will occur within our lifetime, what form it might take, or what its implications will be. However, exploring Chinese online spaces and engaging with non-Western internet cultures is essential for understanding the future of the online world.

I remember recently finding Britney Spears resurged Instagram page and feeling like I wanted to cry. It was around 2022, Britney was getting towards the end of the conservatorship, and the liberty that came with it seemed to be reflected in her newfound unhinged style of posting. On her feed, I found AI slop, dance videos from strange angles and stripping videos with tiny monkey emojis barely keeping her from getting censored. What made me so emotional, though, was not these posts, but that her posting style was straight out of 2010: Whitagram frames, Tumblr-core galaxy visuals, earnest inspirational quotes, simple ironic image macros, IG filters (the original ones, not the AR ones). It almost seemed like her strict conservatorship, which began in the late 2000s, had frozen her posting in the ethos of that era—one of wholesomeness and hope, where meaning felt easy to decode and sincerity and irony were still clearly distinct. Remember the simple irony of Cool Story, Bro, Condescending Wonka, and Someecards? Or the sincerity of #JustGirlyThings, SwagNotes, and the collective optimism of We Are the World (Haiti) and Waka Waka? A time when we could all agree that Minions were cute?

In  “Beyond Based and Cringe” Nate Sloan examines shifts in digital cultural production, particularly in relation to sincerity and irony—ruptures that became strikingly clear as I scrolled through Britney Spears’ Instagram page. Sloan argues that by the late 2010s, social media had fostered a “compulsive self-awareness,” making it nearly impossible to consume culture without also scrutinizing the act of consumption itself. This hyperreferentiality blurs the line between irony and sincerity, creating a landscape where, as he puts it, “any aesthetic, ideology, and image is interchangeable, with its only value located in the ability to shock the viewer or direct them to other images, symbols, and signs.” At its most extreme, this dynamic can lead to irony-poisoning, where detachment from meaning causes people to slip—often unknowingly—into the very beliefs or aesthetics they once treated as edgy jokes. Writer and poster Honor Levy captures a similar collapse of meaning in My First Book:

“Everything is wrong. We just got here and the world is already ending. When things go wrong, we laugh. When things seem pretend, they’re funny. When it turns out it’s real, it’s even funnier (…) The separation between spectacle and real life broke. It stayed broken. Nothing is IRL and everything is IRL.”

When the separation between spectacle and reality breaks down, everything becomes material for irony, and the sincerity that once marked our emotional expressions dissolves into performance. In this context, even the most authentic emotions are rendered hollow because they’re constantly mediated through the lens of ironic detachment. Though I don’t feel irony poisoned yet, I do feel a growing sense of detachment, as if every piece of content exists in the same emotionally flattened space, constantly circulating in a feedback loop of consumption and production. I found myself envying Britney, who seemed to have escaped this darker turn of internet culture. It reminded me of a different time, back in 2011, when I shared that same sincere ethos—before everything became hyper-referential. I got so emotional because it was so beautiful to see someone share inspirational quotes knowing that she actually believes in them, not as a self-aware, performative wink to past internet culture (every day is a new start fr).

But it’s not that simple. Despite my longing, I know that what I’m nostalgic for was never truly there. That’s how nostalgia works, right? As Svetlana Boym wrote in The Future of Nostalgia, the nostalgic impulse is to “obliterate history and turn it into a collective mythology (…), refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition.” What I felt while scrolling through Britney’s Instagram was precisely this: a desire to step outside the relentless churn of internet culture and return to a mythologized past where posting felt like self-expression, not self-branding. It was a longing for a time before our identities were entangled in advanced algorithms, accelerated feedback loops, and the endless cycle of social media consumption and production. But of course, this was a myth. As Sloan reminds me, the sincerity of the late 2000s and early 2010s was never truly that authentic. He argues that sincerity in cultural production at the time was rather a tool to “inoculate a public to the unvarnished miseries of late capitalism.”

The inspirational, sincere, lovepilled and hopecore images I thought I missed were nothing more than reflections of a self-optimizing, individualistic achievement society. In The Spirit of Hope, Byung Chul Han critiques this ideology of positive psychology for privatizing suffering, rather than addressing the societal structures that mediate it. The ideology, distinct from real hope, permeated the internet culture of the early 2010s, where suffering was flattened into a personal failure to stay “positive” and “grateful.” Far from being genuinely hopeful, these sentiments were commodified, molded by the incentive structures of social networks that rewarded relentless self-branding, performative vulnerability, and empty affirmation loops. While I largely agree that the 2010s were out of touch in significant ways, I wonder if the pendulum may have swung too far. In rejecting the hollow sincerity, hope and wholesomeness of that period, did we also lose something worthwhile—however fleeting or flawed it might have been? Did we become too cynical? Can we acknowledge structural problems while still singing “we are the world”?

In 2011, Britney Spears released “Till the World Ends,” an apocalyptic song about partying. Today, it’s often included in the “recession pop” canon—a (retroactively defined) genre that emerged during and in the aftermath of the global financial crisis that can be defined by its frenetic beats, euphoric hooks, and lyrics about dancing and enjoying life in the face of chaos. Songs like Usher’s “DJ Got Us Fallin’ in Love” with lines like “Dance like it’s the last night of your life” and Ke$ha’s “Die Young” proclaiming, “Let’s make the most of the night like we’re gonna die young,” epitomize this ethos, giving a kind of hope in the shape of hedonistic relief to the surrounding turmoil. It seems like recession pop is a musical parallel to the hopeful, sincere posting of the 2010s. Maybe my longing for it is in the fact that we’re once again facing a new set of dooms: climate collapse, the looming tech apocalypse, and the global rise of fascism. But perhaps the need for sincerity is even more urgent now, considering that the hyper-referential, irony-laden posting culture that followed is arguably a contributing factor to at least two of these crises. What began as detached online humor has, in some cases, evolved into a radicalization funnel—exemplified by the likes of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and U.S. VP J.D. Vance. Over the past five years, they’ve moved through a trajectory of irony-pilled neo-monarchism, à la Curtis Yarvin, toward a disturbing embrace of authoritarian ideals. In such a landscape, maybe it’s time to reconsider the value of sincere posting—not as nostalgia, but as a necessary counterbalance to an increasingly cynical digital culture.

But is that even possible? It should be, right? 2010s culture is back—you can hear it in Snow Strippers’ Avicii-inspired chords, The Dare and The Hellp’s electroclash revival, MGNA Crrrta’s dubstep beats. Skinny jeans, Tumblr-core, and indie sleaze aesthetics flood my feed. I have also seen the visual language of 2010s ‘hopecore’ being referenced in music videos, like Bassvictim’s Alice and Black Country, New Road’s Science Fair and Track X, referencing the wholesome relatability-posting era of #justgirlythings. But something’s off. Alice leans into visuals of hope and inspiration, yet the lyrics spiral into isolation (“Never liked to be alone”) and digital alienation (“Online games on my phone”), highlighting a disconnect between what we see and what we hear. Similarly, Science Fair borrows the past’s sincere imagery, but Isaac Wood’s anxious delivery and the relentless repetition of “references, references, references” in the first verse feels more like surrender than hope. These works don’t revive 2010s hope; they haunt it, circling familiar imagery stripped of warmth. They feel like echoes of a lost time, emptied and repurposed for an era too self-aware to believe again:

Yet, in some corners, sincerity seems to be making a genuine return. Here are some examples:

• Addison Raees posting about how much she loves music

• Charli XCX 2024 song Everything is Romantic

• BabyMorocco, known for his performative, campy, and ironic persona, revealed in a 2025 Pitchfork interview that he's now striving for more sincere lyrics in his music. He pointed to La Roux's 2008 self-titled album as a key source of inspiration for this shift.

• Bladees 20202 track Noblest Strife.

• Ethel Cain’s Tumblr plea for sincerity, in which she addresses the overwhelming ironic response to her work by people on the internet. She writes, "I miss genuine passion" and reflects on how, as a society, we've lost touch with the intense love for things that once made us feel alive

Out of all these contemporary forms of sincerity, Honor Levy’s words in My First Book feel like a bridge between the mythologized past and our hypermediated present. While the earnestness of Britney’s 2010s-era posts evokes nostalgia for a seemingly simpler digital world, Levy’s work speak to sincerity in a world where irony has become both armor and weapon. Rather than resurrecting the past; it interrogates it, presenting a hope that acknowledges the absurdity of our times without surrendering to nihilism.

Byung-Chul Han’s distinction between optimism and hope is helpful here. The 2010s’ inspirational posting and recession pop anthems traded in optimism—a shallow, closed system of positivity that ignored structural darkness. Levy, however, embodies hope: a searching, active engagement with uncertainty. “Unlike positive thinking,” Han writes, “hope does not turn away from the negative… It remains mindful of it.” This tension pulses through Levy’s prose. In DO IT COWARD, set in a hauntological, rundown NYC arcade, Honor Levy’s character channels the hopecore sincerity of the 2010s—“just do it,” “we are all in this together,” “live or die trying”—while simultaneously acknowledging the hyperreferential world we’re stuck in: “staring at the fourth wall, mind melting, no-clipping, glitching.” She captures the instability of now—“Be afraid because it is life”—while insisting on hope: “Be brave because it’s death.” 

And then, the line that distills it all: “How lucky are we to be a part of this RPG?”. To call life a “game” in 2025 is to acknowledge the absurdity of navigating climate collapse, doomscroll nihilism, and the collapse of shared reality—without denying that playing still matters.  Her sincerity isn’t a rejection of hyperreferentiality but a survival tactic within it. It’s about engaging with the game, knowing full well it’s rigged. Not because we believe in winning, but because opting out isn’t an option.

A similar tone can be read in Levy’s short story Internet Girl, where she writes: “No matter how feminist your followers are, if you are a girl, your nip pics will be taken down. Instagram has this magic titty-finding algorithm, and the algorithm is always learning, just like you and me when we were eleven and alone and absorbing it all so fast, so hungry, twirling around our rooms.” This passage works as both a critique of the algorithmic mediation of our lives and a reflection on the loss of innocence in a digitally mediated world. Yet, even as Levy highlights the absurdity of this system, there’s a glimmer of hope in her suggestion that the algorithm itself might one day “wake up and realizes that it exists just to find nipples and it will be sad and sorry and human and pray to stop.” It’s a moment of absurd, almost childlike empathy that cuts through the cynicism of our times.

If Britney’s “Till the World Ends” was about dancing through the apocalypse, Levy’s hope feels less like a party at the end of the world and more like standing still in the wreckage—acknowledging the ruins but refusing to look away. The challenge then, isn’t to resurrect 2010s optimism, but to find hope, meaning—and maybe even beauty—in the rubble.

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SO! Amplifies. . .a highly-curated, rolling mini-post series by which we editors hip you to cultural makers and organizations doing work we really really dig.  You’re welcome!

When the pandemic hit the world in late 2019, the concept of lockdown ceased the social life of the  people and their communities. In these unprecedented circumstances, a video from Italy took the internet. People in Italian towns such as Siena, Benevento, Turin, and Rome were singing from their windows and balconies, which raised morale. The song “Bella Ciao,” an old partisan Italian song, became an anthem of hope against adversity. This anti-fascist song was popularized during the mid-20th century across the globe as a part of progressive movements. Following this, people in many countries around the world created their renditions of “Bella Ciao” in Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish, Persian, French, Spanish, Armenian, German, Portuguese, Russian, and within India in languages such as Punjabi, Marathi, Bangla, and even in sign language renditions. It was such an apt moment that captured the idea of empathy, solidarity, and the human need for community.   This moment was still resonating with me when I was approached by Goethe Institut, New Delhi, to work on music and protest, and create The Music Library. I knew what I needed to do.     

The Music Library was conceptualized as a weekly playlist of protest songs. I believe protests are not just demands but are aspirations, unfulfilled promises that truly represent the resilience of people. I could not imagine anything more beautiful than protest music to represent the world, as it amplifies human desires for connection and better days ahead. I designed it as a weekly music bulletin that people could dwell in for half an hour, and it would be like a short musical insight to that country or theme. Although the project had to be cut short due to institutional limitations, The Music Library creted 36 weekly playlists focused on liberation movements, anti-colonial struggles, people’s uprisings, and popular expressions of dissent.

The Music Library hosts two types of playlists: issue-based and country- or region-specific. This approach curates and classifies music for a broader audience attuned to these categories. When I prepare a playlist, the first thing I seek is to incorporate marginalized and diverse voices. Diversity can be based on caste, gender, language, region, and more. I typically favor field recordings, amateur productions, and emerging artists. Occasionally, the featured artists have as few as 50 views on their videos. After listening to numerous songs and consulting individuals with greater expertise, I select 5-8 songs and then write a blurb to introduce the playlist. Sometimes, I also seek help for language assistance. In that sense, it’s a very collaborative effort. The Music Library’s mission resonates with Merje Laiapea’s mapping of Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion through music. The Music Library similarly engages protest music, but with a wider array of areas and themes.    

After the first few weeks, I decided to transition from Indian protest music to global and I wanted to foster a gradual introduction instead of a snap transition. I realized that inviting guest curators would enable the transition to linger on for a bit before settling in, and the guest curators would have a much better idea of the protest culture in their respective country and/or area of research. For example, Sara Kazmi, a scholar-activist-singer from Pakistan, curated a playlist on protest music of Pakistan; Yueng, who is researching Hong Kong music for his Ph.D, curated a playlist on The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. So their expertise and knowledge of respective countries give us a better sense of what protest music is for people there than I could provide on my own. Like Sara and Yueng, many of the guest curators have either been part of protest movements or have written, observed, or researched closely. Likewise, there are guest playlists by musicologist Lucas Avidan that emphasize the prominence of hip-hop music, or as some call it “Bonga flava” in Tanzanian protest music, and a playlist on MC Todfod, an emerging rapper from Mumbai Hip-Hop collective Swadesi who passed away at the age of 24. Protests themselves are essentially about bringing people together and working together. In this sense, the co-curatorial process resonated with the idea of protest music itself as a collective action.

The idea of protest is essentially an act, attitude, orientation, and assertion against the dominant conservative system. So, in that sense, its definition is as varied as the kinds of conservatism existing in societies. It could be based on class, caste, gender, race, nation, region, language, food, and culture. In short, protest music means speaking up against power. Protest music plays multiple roles for the people practicing it or whom it represents. In a highly unequal power relationship, it is like a crack or a rupture against hegemony. In others, it asserts power. For many, protest music symbolizes an idea, utopia, like one world or Begumpura, i.e., land without sorrow, in 15th-century saint-poet Ravidas from India. With old social issues such as casteism, patriarchy, feudalism still lingering around and consolidating, and capitalism and nationalism getting strongholds across the globe, the world is more fragmented and hostile. In this situation, the protest music from around the world raises some particular issues but also many universal ones, such as equality, recognition, dignity, food, housing, healthcare, education, and above all, the right to live as an equal citizen. The Music Library brings all of this protest music under a single umbrella, as all this music has one thing in common: Resilience! At times, The Music Library is a music room that soothes, and other times a war cry for equality!

Bangladesh’s playlist, for example, curated by Dhaka-based artist, Emdadul Hoque Topu, is based on Liberation War songs. The Liberation War was a unique liberation movement based on linguistic identity. So, language, a mode of expression like music, was at the heart of the movement. Interestingly, when the recent popular uprising occurred, I was in Dhaka and saw the popular resentment against the Liberation War and its icons. It shows that protest music is as evolving and contemporary as any other expressive form, one age’s protest song could later turn into a voice of the oppressor or used to oppress any dissent. For instance, Rajakars, a term that till recently had very negative connotation due to its association with the detractors of anti-liberation, has been employed and repurposed in a chant or slogan ami ke, tumi ke, Rajakar, Rajakar (who am I, who are you, Rajakar, Rajakar) for the current uprising that led to the overthrow of the Sheikh Hasina-led government.

In another instance, the historic Farmer’s Protest of 2020-21 in India–termed the biggest movement in recorded history– has led to a proliferation of music to bolster it. Though the protest started in the north Indian state of Punjab, it spread across India and drew global support. Punjab is a musically unique place; it is one of India’s most popular and prolific independent music industries. Due to early migration history, Punjabi music has spread globally and has been adaptive of derived from various musical cultures such as rap, pop, etc, while maintaining its distinct linguistic identity. This made the Punjabi music popular and relevant beyond its linguistic boundaries. The movement has been chronicled by a newsletter called the Trolley Times, where I worked as a co-editor. Numerous Punjabi singers have contributed immensely by producing music and being part of the movement. After a long time, a strong impulse in the popular cultural sphere evolved in solidarity with the mass movement.

The Music Library was under construction when the world was going through a pandemic, and unprecedented isolation, a hallmark of oppression.  In the pandemic, when people were dying, this quote became popular: Corona is the virus, Capitalism is the pandemic. People could see the havoc of capitalism playing out in full public display from the first world to the third world. Someone who is cornered, pushed against the wall, with no recourse to grievance redressal, cries out to make themselves count, and find solidarity and rise. I designed The Music Library to show how music can break a slumber and bring people to march together, similarly to what “Bella Ciao” did during COVID-19.

It began as a hum that was joined by neighbors, and then it spread, loudly, across the world as an expression of solidarity and resilience. “Bella Ciao” is such a marvellous testimony of what music can do and has been doing! I hope The Music Library serves as a humble repository of this resilience.

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Featured Image: Image of “Bella Ciao” being sung in Santiago, Chile during the ‘estallido social’ (2019) by AbarcaVasti, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Mukesh Kulriya is a Ph.D. scholar in Ethnomusicology at The Herb Alpert School of Music, University of California, Los Angeles, USA. His research focuses on the intersection of music and religion in South Asia in the context of gender and caste. His Ph.D. research examines bhakti, or devotion practices within the ambit of popular religion in Rajasthan, India. Since 2010, he has collaborated on India-based projects centered around the craft, culture, folk music, and oral traditions as an organizer, archivist, translator, and researcher. He also works on global protest music and currently working on a podcast on Music and Hate.

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A Tradition of Free and Odious Utterance: Free Speech & Sacred Noise in Steve Waters’s Temple–Gabriel Salomon Mindel and Alexander J. Ullman

Singing The Resistance: January 2017’s Anti-Trump Music Videos–Holger Schulze

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