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.

Breaking down stereotypes

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.

About the Author

Jessica Bissett Perea is Assistant Professor of Native American Studies, University of California, Davis. She 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.

Table of Contents

Discography
Chronology
Acknowledgements
Preface

Introduction: Listening to the Density of Modern Indigeneity
Part I: Archiving Performances

Chapter 1. Sounding Archives of Presence
Chapter 2. Recording Indigeneity
Part II: Performing Archives

Chapter 3. Traditioning a Yupiit Resurgence Anthem
Chapter 4. Incorporating Inheritance and Complementarity
Conclusion: With, By, and For: Toward a Sonic Indigenous Vernacular
Bibliography

Paperback, published in 2021, 334 Pages, 78 illustrations and 20 tables