Music and Modernity among First Peoples of North America ed. by Victoria Lindsay Levine and Dylan Robinson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Music and Modernity among First Peoples of North America ed. by Victoria Lindsay Levine and Dylan Robinson Ann Morrison Spinney Music and Modernity among First Peoples of North America. Edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine and Dylan Robinson. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2019. [xviii, 330 p. ISBN 9780819578624 (hardback), $85; ISBN 9780819578631 (paperback), $26.95; 9780819578648 (e-book), $21.99.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. This collection deserves a wide readership, because it exemplifies the conversations needed among the various stakeholders in traditional music to decolonize scholarship. The authors are performers, scholars, performer– scholars, and members and descendants of Native and settler communities in North America. Identities of contributors are not limited to any of these, though they are clearly stated; nor are their ideas corralled. By not imposing culture areas, census categories, musical genres, or theoretical schools in its organization, this volume demonstrates its main point: that Native North American traditions are not categorical. The music and musicking discussed are astonishing in their variety and a delight to listen to. A styles inventory would include hip-hop, powwow, pop, television soundtracks, performance art, and classical. The articles do not all supply links, but most of the music and video examples can be found easily online. Several examples in the "art music" category are significant innovations, worthy of inclusion in any contemporary-music survey course, not confined to Native American studies. By grouping many contrasting examples together here under that rubric, however, a strong point is made about the vitality of music making among first peoples of North America. The geographical coverage of the chapters is also broadly inclusive, ranging from Mi'kmaq in the Canadian Atlantic Provinces to the western United States–Mexico border; crossing the plains, encompassing both sides of the US–Canada border; and stretching from Inuit communities in Alaska east to Greenland. There are few articles limited to one community, location, or tradition. The collection is framed by two invitations, each from a Native musicologist. Heidi Aklaseaq Senungetuk opens the volume with an invitation to dance, "to consider the ideas presented here" (p. xiii), drawing from her experience of music performance in both classical and traditional styles. Trevor Reed closes with an invitation to listen, building on his work repatriating song recordings to emphasize that audience [End Page 282] experiences are central to understanding "whether the ideologies or desires the artists convey are actually being realized" (p. 263). Editor Victoria Lindsay Levine explains that rather than dividing the book into sections, they chose to let concerns and theoretical concepts weave among the articles. They will likely be read as individual pieces, but the collection has a kind of arc as it is laid out, with the most perspicacious theoretical arguments appearing in the latter chapters. (For this review, those on similar musical styles are considered together.) Ontology is a common focus throughout, as is reference to Philip Joseph Deloria's Indians in Unexpected Places (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004). Despite the sophistication of their arguments, these articles are not jargon-filled jawbreakers, but would be appropriate readings for upper-level undergraduates. In the first case study, David Samuels gently teases apart the contradictions apparent in the famous photographs of Frances Densmore and Mountain Chief, revealing these to be assumptions, not visual facts. Introductory ethnomusicology classes will benefit from his reconsideration. Gordon Smith's contextual analysis of Mi'kmaw funerals at Eskasoni focuses on the community's use of video recordings to "preserve traditions while creating new ones" (p. 33). The video examples he provides demonstrate the relationships between past, present, and future that confound Western teleological concepts. While he does not mention autoethnography, it is a useful reference for this chapter. Christina Leza examines activism on the US–Mexico border through hiphop. Leza sensitively explores the cooperation between indigenous and Chicano communities that is needed to confront abuses of authority along the border. Over different generations, both groups have made claims to this land. The crew Shining Soul on whom she focuses seems to have disbanded, but their tracks can still be found online, and her analysis of the codemixing and switching in their songs that speaks to both groups is not limited...