THE SOUND OF VICTORY: MUSIC, SPORT, AND SOCIETY

Available September 2026 from NYU Press

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The collisions of music and sport are so ubiquitous they often go unnoticed as cultural phenomena. Yet the integration of sound into sport has become inseparable from the experience itself—from walk-up songs and seventh-inning sing-alongs in Major League Baseball to the halftime spectacle of the Super Bowl, the “California Sound” of surfing culture, and the percussive traditions of Brazilian Capoeira.

The Sound of Victory: Music, Sport, and Society explores these intersections through close examinations of key moments, figures, spaces, and events that reveal the deep socio-cultural significance and historical reverberations of music and sport. Bringing together interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners—filmmakers, journalists, and cultural critics—the volume investigates how sound shapes the ways sport is performed, experienced, and understood across diverse contexts from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.

Across eighteen chapters organized into four thematic sections, The Sound of Victory positions the links between music, sound, and sport as a generative lens for exploring questions of power, identity, and belonging. Spanning media, technology, politics, and popular culture, contributors trace how the music, sound, and sporting industries have evolved in dialogue with one another. Together, they illuminate an enduring relationship that continues to define the affective and communal power of modern sport.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue | Perry B. Johnson and Courtney M. Cox

Introduction: The Sound of Victory | Perry B. Johnson and Courtney M. Cox

Part I: Mapping Sport Sounds

• A Chorus of Grunts: Sonic Gender Trouble in the “Weight Room” | Natalia Alexis Perez

• Noisy Stadiums and Tenants Making Noise | Cerianne Robertson

• How Hip Hop Became Streetball’s Soundtrack | Thomas P. Oates

• Surf Rock, the Soundtrack of an Imagined Lifestyle | Keith Plocek

Part II: Legacy and Lineage

• A Stadium Full of Stars | Alice Motion

• A Thousand and One Dream Shakes | Sama’an Ashrawi

• Sonic Virality: Listening to Pacific Athletes Online | Lana Lopesi

• Baseball and Jazz | Shakeia Taylor

• Fight Songs: Sonic Solidarity and Branding in Boxing | Rudy Mondragón

Part III: Sounds of the Sporting Nation

• Argentina’s Soccer Chanting Tradition, from Neighborhood Stadiums to Global Stages | Eduardo Herrera

• One Night in the Motor City: Revisiting José Feliciano’s 1968 Pre-Game Anthem Performance | Perry B. Johnson and Courtney M. Cox

• The Possibilities of Sporting Sonic Multiculture in the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games | Daniel Burdsey

• The Tiger’s Roar: Louisiana State University’s Football Soundscape in the New Deal Years | Carrie Tipton

• The Sounds of America’s Pastime: Music in Baseball | Ross Venneberg

Part IV: Storytelling and Acoustic Design

• Recording Stadium Sound and Fan Engagement in Brazilian Football | Pedro Silva Marra, Jordan Zalis, and Fernando Oliveira (translator)

• “They Had to Hear It”: Historical Fragments, Audio- Storytelling, and Learning to Listen to Sports | Amira Rose Davis

• On Film: Play, Sound, and Neurocinematics | Elena Parasco

• Soundscape Design in the American Football Film | Henry Adam Svec