Sour Solidarities: Musicians, Academics, and Precarity in the Pandemic's Wake

Abstract

Abstract This article reflects on precarity in ethnomusicology by connecting the precarities of interlocutors and academics. Based on research conducted for the Society for Ethnomusicology's project “Musicians in America during the Covid-19 Pandemic,” I propose sour solidarities as a structural relationship that shows that while contingent ethnomusicologists and independent musicians confront similar worsening conditions under pandemic precarity, we also face a broader racialized class differentiation mediated by the institution of the neoliberal university and the field of ethnomusicology. I suggest that interrogations of such structural relationships are crucial as ethnomusicology addresses its historical legacies and the state of the field after 2020.