Recording Culture: Powwow Music and the Aboriginal Recording Industry on the Northern Plains by Christopher A. Scales (review)

Abstract

Christopher A. Scales, Recording Culture: Powwow Music and Aboriginal Recording Industry on Northern Plains. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012. 368 pp.Recording Culture: Powwow Music and Aboriginal Recording Industry on Northern Plains is a lively and engaging work of ethnographic interpretation. Its focus is on music made, danced to, competitively judged, recorded, and circulated by present-day Native American and First Nations performers in, and beyond, Northern Plains region of United States and Canada. The book focuses on two domains that are now recursively connected-music composed for, and performed at, large-scale native dance events known as powwows and recording industry that has arisen to mediate and circulate this music beyond individual contexts. As a study of indigenous music from Great Plains region, book fruitfully updates a literature (on Plains Indian musical practices) that is as old as ethnographic disciplines themselves. As a study of indigenous recording practices, book goes to heart of a territory that has only been tentatively explored in previous ethnographies of Native American music. Christopher A. Scales very successfully bridges his two field sites-powwow grounds and recording studios-and, in doing so, effectively approaches an established topic from a fresh and productive vantage point.The book is based on ethnographic field research undertaken in Winnipeg, elsewhere in Manitoba, and in adjacent areas of Canada and US. Scales' focus is not a particular native reservation, neighborhood, or community. Instead, his attention is divided between the powwow trail and a particular Winnipeg recording studio and record company that is a key center for production and marketing of commercial recordings of powwow music. Scales traveled with singers, dancers, vendors, and other participants from dance event to dance event within a large regional performance circuit (a social frame first theorized in Roark-Calnek 1977:525). The recording industry context is Winnipeg-based Arbor Records, where Scales apprenticed himself, thereby learning a great deal of technical, business, and social knowledge. During course of his ethnographic work with company, he recorded and produced a range of powwow recordings, gaining, in process, unique knowledge of his subject.A coda brings readers up to speed on more recent developments, but book's temporal frame is period from 1998 to 2010. This was a period of significant change in powwow music world, spanning transition from widespread use of cassette tapes to rise of CD (still a vital form in Indian Country) and newer emergence of music made, bought, and sold (sometimes also pirated) in an all-digital, carrier-free environment. In terms of musical practices, this period was characterized by rise of very large-scale powwow events in which singers and dancers could compete for cash prizes of unprecedented size. As Scales skillfully documents, an economic system, an aesthetic system, and a system of musical recording and distribution practices arose out of this scaling up of powwow events and associated professionalization of powwow musical groups. Scales is very effective in his description of contemporary powwow musical world on Northern Plains (and he evidences basic awareness of distinct, but linked, Southern Plains-centered powwow as well [Ellis 2003]). His descriptions of this music scene are nuanced and his interpretations are carefully constructed and argued. His account is based on a wide acquaintance with world that he describes, but it relies specifically upon Scales' friendship with, and education by, two prominent powwow singers and one non-native businessman who records and sells powwow music. The author's ethnographic reporting is careful, giving due weight to words and perspectives of his interlocutors. …