Recording culture : Powwow music and the Aboriginal recording industry on the Northern Plains
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Recording culture : Powwow music and the Aboriginal recording industry on the Northern Plains
(Refiguring American music)
Duke University Press, 2012
- : pbk
Available at 2 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
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  France
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  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [311]-322) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Recording is central to the musical lives of contemporary powwow singers yet, until now, their aesthetic practices when recording have been virtually ignored in the study of Native American expressive cultures. Recording Culture is an exploration of the Aboriginal music industry and the powwow social world that supports it. For twelve years, Christopher A. Scales attended powwows-large intertribal gatherings of Native American singer-drummers, dancers, and spectators-across the northern Plains. For part of that time, he worked as a sound engineer for Arbor Records, a large Aboriginal music label based in Winnipeg, Canada. Drawing on his ethnographic research at powwow grounds and in recording studios, Scales examines the ways that powwow drum groups have utilized recording technology in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the unique aesthetic principles of recorded powwow music, and the relationships between drum groups and the Native music labels and recording studios. Turning to "competition powwows," popular weekend-long singing and dancing contests, Scales analyzes their role in shaping the repertoire and aesthetics of drum groups in and out of the recording studio. He argues that the rise of competition powwows has been critical to the development of the powwow recording industry. Recording Culture includes a CD featuring powwow music composed by Gabriel Desrosiers and performed by the Northern Wind Singers.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part I. Northern Plains Powwow Culture
1. Powwow Practices: Competition and the Discourse of Tradition 27
2. Powwow Songs: Aesthetics and Performance Practice 63
3. Drum Groups and Singers 112
Part II. The Mediation of Powwows
4. The Powwow Recording Industry in Western Canada: Race, Culture, and Commerce 143
5. Powwow Music in the Studio: Mediation and Musical Fields 187
6. Producing Powwow Music: The Aesthetics of Liveness 212
7. Powwows "Live" and "Mediated" 241
Coda. Recording Culture in the Twenty-First Century 268
Appendix: Notes on the CD Tracks 282
Notes 289
References 311
Index 323
A photo gallery appears after page 140.
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