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Sound Relations delves into histories of Inuit musical life in Alaska to trace the ways in which sound is integral to self-determination and sovereignty. Offering radical and relational ways of listening to Inuit performances across genres-from hip hop to Christian hymnody and traditional drumsongs to funk and R&B -author Jessica Bissett Perea shows how Indigenous ways of musicking amplify possibilities for more just and equitable futures.
About the author
Jessica Bissett Perea is a Dena'ina (Alaska Dena) scholar whose work intersects the larger fields of Native American & Indigenous studies (NAIS) and music & sound studies. She specializes in Critical NAIS approaches to performance, media, and improvisation studies, and histories of Indigenous arts and activism in North Pacific and Circumpolar Arctic communities. Dr. Bissett Perea earned a Bachelor of Music in Education from Central Washington University, an MA in Musicology at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a PhD in Musicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Bissett Perea currently works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis.
Summary
Sound Relations delves into histories of Inuit musical life in Alaska to register the significance of sound as integral to self-determination and sovereignty. Offering radical and relational ways of listening to Inuit performances across a range of genres--from hip hop to Christian hymnody and traditional drumsongs to funk and R&B --author Jessica Bissett Perea registers how a density (not difference) of Indigenous ways of musicking from a vast archive of presence sounds out entanglements between structures of Indigeneity and colonialism. This work dismantles stereotypical understandings of "Eskimos," "Indians," and "Natives" by addressing the following questions: What exactly is "Native" about Native music? What does it mean to sound (or not sound) Native? Who decides? And how can in-depth analyses of Native music that center Indigeneity reframe larger debates of race, power, and representation in twenty-first century American music historiography? Instead of proposing singular truths or facts, this book invites readers to consider the existence of multiple simultaneous truths, a density of truths, all of which are culturally constructed, performed, and in some cases politicized and policed. Native ways of doing music history engage processes of sound worlding that envision otherwise, beyond nation-state notions of containment and glorifications of Alaska as solely an extraction site for U.S. settler capitalism, and instead amplifies possibilities for more just and equitable futures.
Additional text
Sound Relations is a magnificent achievement, a profoundly path breaking and persuasive work of decolonial scholarship that enriches Indigenous studies, sound studies, and cultural studies by presenting original and generative new concepts, ideas, and terms. Through research conducted with, by, and for Inuit music makers in Alaska, Bissett Perea reveals how social identities are heard, how music contains dense, fluid, and grounded practices of identification, and how performance functions as a tool for resurgent world making.
