Sound Relations: Native Ways of Doing Music History in Alaska

Sound Relations explores the significance of sound in Inuit musical life in Alaska, challenging stereotypes and proposing multiple simultaneous truths that center Indigeneity. It offers a radical and relational way of listening to Inuit performances across genres, highlighting the entanglements between structures of Indigeneity and colonialism.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 312 pages
Publication date: 30 December 2021
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

Sound Relations explores the rich tapestry of Inuit musical traditions in Alaska, highlighting the profound significance of sound in the pursuit of self-determination and sovereignty. Through a radical and relational approach, author Jessica Bissett Perea delves into the diverse genres of Inuit performances, ranging from hip-hop to Christian hymns, traditional drumsongs, funk, and R&B. By foregrounding a density of Indigenous ways of musicking from a vast archive of presence, she reveals the intricate entanglements between structures of Indigeneity and colonialism. This groundbreaking work challenges stereotypical notions of Eskimos, Indians, and Natives by addressing crucial questions such as what defines Native music, what it means to sound or not sound Native, who holds the power to decide, and how in-depth analyses of Native music centered on Indigeneity can reshape broader debates about race, power, and representation in twenty-first-century American music historiography. Instead of offering singular truths, this book invites readers to embrace the existence of multiple simultaneous truths, a rich tapestry of culturally constructed, performed, and sometimes politicized and policed realities. Native ways of doing music history engage processes of sound worlding that envision alternatives to nation-state notions of containment and the glorification of Alaska as merely an extraction site for U.S. settler capitalism. Instead, they amplify possibilities for more just and equitable futures.

Weight: 490g
Dimension: 235 x 156 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780190869144