ABOUT US

The Sound of Victory (SOV) explores the rich and dynamic relationship between music/sound and sport.

Led by Courtney M. Cox and Perry B. Johnson, SOV is an interdisciplinary initiative and creative collective rooted in research that activates moments, figures and events where music/sound and sport have collided around the world and throughout history.

Bridging interdisciplinary research projects, original scholarship, multimedia productions and public programming, SOV works to highlight and contextualize the deep intersections of music/sound and sport and to analyze the connected histories of these global spheres of entertainment in order to explore questions of power, identity, community and culture.

SOV’s forthcoming book, The Sound of Victory: Music, Sport, and Society (NYU Press, September 2026), joins international scholars, journalists and practitioners to critically examine the relationship between music/sound and sport through engagement with key moments, movements, figures and events.

Together, Johnson and Cox are also working on their second book project, a cultural history of the NFL’s Super Bowl halftime show.

Current SOV programming includes Playing Beyond the Field, a three-part series, taking place Spring 2026 at the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, Tennessee in partnership with the Vanderbilt Sports & Society Initiative, which explores Nashville’s robust African American musical and sporting legacies. Visit Playing Beyond the Field.

On the Sounding Off podcast, SOV’s ongoing audio series, Johnson and Cox sit down with athletes, journalists, musicians, critics, DJs, scholars and more to highlight the voices and histories of individuals working across the intertwined sectors of music/sound and sport. Listen to Sounding Off.

As a resource for educators and students, SOV seeks to address key gaps in music and sport knowledge, offering resources that provide critical entry points for examining how specific moments in music/sound and sport have together shaped the contours of broader dynamics of culture and politics around the world. Visit SOV resources.

As an intellectual project, SOV considers: What is the relationship between music, sound and sport? How do the intersections of music/sound and sport (in)form historical and contemporary understandings of space and place? Can we reimagine the “politics of play” through examinations of music/sound and sport? How can an interrogation of music/sound and sport offer us new understandings of culture and history? How does the study and analysis of music/sound and sport—as intertwined spheres of entertainment—offer an under-researched entry point for new theoretical and intellectual contributions to such fields as: Music, Sport, Sound Studies, Communication, Cultural Studies, American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Performance Studies, Media Studies and Feminist Theory?

Early support for SOV was provided in part by the Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg’s Norman Lear Center, the USC Graduate School and the Annenberg School of Communication at USC.

Team

Courtney M. Cox

Project Director

Photo credit: Chelsé Lilly/#TakenByStorm

Dr. Courtney M. Cox (she/her) is an associate professor in the Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon. Her research examines issues related to labor, identity, and technology through sport and wine.

She previously worked for ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut in Event Production (College Football, Heisman Trophy Presentation) and Studio Directing (SportsCenter, NBA Countdown, Baseball Tonight, and more).

Cox helped launch Longhorn Network in Austin, TX, working in live trucks, control rooms, and on set as a stage manager and associate director.

She has also worked in public radio as an intern and freelance producer for NPR-affiliate KPCC in Pasadena, California. While completing her PhD, she spent a season working for the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks — a foundational experience for her later research following women’s basketball players around the world.

Cox’s first book, Double Crossover: Gender, Media, and Politics in Global Basketball (University of Illinois Press, 2025), examines how athletes and advocates within women’s basketball navigate their lives and labor within the contemporary sports-media landscape.

courtneymcox.com | cmcox at uoregon dot edu

Courtney’s walk-up song:

Perry B. Johnson

Project Director

Perry B. Johnson, Ph.D., is a music scholar, cultural historian and producer of several public-facing music and humanities projects. Her primary research and practice focus on music, popular culture and American cultural histories.

Johnson is the associate producer and co-host of the second season of Outside the Lyrics (coming March 2026), an award-winning, Emmy-nominated documentary series from PBS that explores musical cultures and their subcultural offsprings through the stories of artistic pioneers.

Johnson is also at work on the manuscript for her first solo monograph, a cultural history of sexual misconduct in America’s popular music industries. With this project, Johnson examines how incidents of misconduct are framed to track how the sector’s historically grim collage of abuse is structurally, institutionally and ideologically produced and sustained by traditional and social media.

In her production work, Johnson has produced and organized events at The National Museum of African American Music, The Getty Center, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Hammer Museum, La Brea Tar Pits, The Ebell of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Public Library, Los Angeles’ historic Palace Theatre, Regent Theater, and more.

Johnson teaches in the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California and is the producer of Arts Talk, the official podcast of the USC Arts Now initiative.

Johnson received her Ph.D. in communication from the USC Annenberg School of Communication, where she had a graduate affiliation in the Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies. Johnson was also a research fellow with The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg's Norman Lear Center. Prior to returning to USC Annenberg as faculty, Johnson was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania at the Annenberg School for Communication’s Center for Media at Risk with a joint appointment at the Annenberg Center for Collaborative Communication.

pbjohnso at usc dot edu

Perry’s walk-up song: