Guides: Indigenous music and musicians: Find background information

Find background information: Description

This section contains a selected list of resources available through the Library about Indigenous music and musical traditions. Discover a selection of bibliographies, encyclopedias, handbooks, and collections of essays.

Bibliographies

North American Indian Music: a Guide to Published Sources and Selected Recordings by Richard Keeling
First published in 1997, the present volume contains references and descriptive annotations for 1,497 sources on North American Indian and Inuit music. This book encompasses works on dance, ritual, and other aspects of religion or culture related to music, and selected "classic" recordings have also been included. The coverage is equally broad in other respects, including writings in several different languages and spanning a chronological period from 1535 to 1995.

Encyclopedias

Encyclopedia of Music in Canada
- Includes entries on prominent musicians of all genres as well as entries by ethnic group, city, and region.
- Features an article about Indigenous music
The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music
- Comprehensive resource with photographs, maps, musical and audio examples devoted to research about the music of Africa (V.1), South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean (V.2), the United States and Canada (V.3), Southeast Asia (V.4), South Asia (V.5), the Middle East (V.6), East Asia (V.7), Europe (V.8), and Australia and Pacific Islands (V.9)
- The 10th volume includes a glossary, a bibliography of literature and recordings by region, and personal essays by prominent ethnomusicologists on their careers and research practices.
- Nine accompanying CDs are available from the 4th-floor desk
Grove Music Online
- Foremost English-language scholarly encyclopedia of music and musicians
- Extensive articles and bibliographies written by subject experts
- Includes detailed works lists for certain composers: useful for confirming the identity of pieces and for finding individual pieces within composers' complete works sets held by the Library
- Features articles on Indigenous music in North America, including Canada

Encyclopedia of Native American Music of North America by Timothy Archambault; Elaine Keillor; John M. H. Kelly
This book is a one-stop reference resource for the vast variety of musical expressions of the First Peoples' cultures of North America, both past and present. It documents the surprisingly varied musical practices among North America's First Peoples, both historically and in the modern context. The entries address how ethnomusicologists with Native American heritage are revolutionizing approaches to the discipline, and showcase how musicians with First Peoples' heritage are influencing modern musical forms.
The Encyclopedia of Native Music by Brian Wright-McLeod
Brian Wright-McLeod has gathered the musicians and their music into this comprehensive reference, an authoritative source for biographies and discographies of hundreds of Native artists. This encyclopedia recognizes the multifaceted contributions made by Native recording artists by tracing the history of their commercially released music and provides an overview of the surprising abundance of recorded Native music while underlining its historical value. This encyclopedia has almost 1,800 entries spanning more than 100 years.

Books and collections of essays - Canadian

Aboriginal Music in Contemporary Canada by Anna Hoefnagels and Beverley Diamond (Editors)
Comprised of essays, interviews, and personal reflections by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal musicians and scholars alike, the collection highlights themes of innovation, teaching and transmission, and cultural interaction.
Essential Song: Three Decades of Northern Cree Music by Lynn Whidden
This book is a detailed ethnomusicology of the northern Cree of Quebec and Manitoba. The result of more than two decades spent in the North learning from the Cree, Lynn Whidden discusses the tradition, meaning, and origins of hunting songs. Widden also examines women's songs, and traces the impact of social change on the song traditions of these communities. The book also includes (online) original audio tracks of more than fifty Cree hunting songs.
Hungry Listening by Dylan Robinson
Reimagining how we understand and write about the Indigenous listening experience, Hungry Listening is the first book to consider listening from both Indigenous and settler colonial perspectives. A critical response to what has been called the "whiteness of sound studies," Dylan Robinson evaluates how decolonial practices of listening emerge from increasing awareness of our listening positionality.
Musical Intimacies and Indigenous Imaginaries by Byron Dueck
Byron Dueck explores several styles performed in the vital Aboriginal musical scene in Manitoba, focusing on fiddling, country music, Christian hymnody, and step dancing. In considering these genres and the contexts in which they are performed, author Byron Dueck outlines a compelling theory of musical publics, examines the complex, overlapping social orientations of contemporary musicians, and shows how music and dance play a central role in a distinctive Indigenous public culture.
Music in Canada by Elaine Keillor
Elaine Keillor offers an unprecedented history of Canadian musical expressions and their relationship to Canada's great cultural and geographic diversity. A survey of "musics" in Canada - the country's multiplicity of musical genres and rich heritage - is complemented by forty-three vignettes highlighting topics such as Inuit throat games, the music of k.d. lang, and orchestras in Victoria. This book features several chapters focused on Indigenous music in Canada.
Métis Music : Stories of Recognition and Resurgence by Monique Giroux
What makes music Métis, and who gets to decide? Complex dynamics of recognition, non-recognition, and erasure have played out over a history of Métis music-making, from the Red River Resistance all the way to the present day. Monique Giroux argues that Métis music reflects broader social relationships, in particular the politics of recognition. Drawing on newspaper articles, archival documents, interviews with Métis and non-Métis musicians, and over a decade of research at cultural festivals, she charts a history of reframings.

Books and collections of essays - American / North American

Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North America by Kyle T. Mays
Expressive culture has always been an important part of the social, political, and economic lives of Indigenous people. More recently, Indigenous people have blended expressive cultures with hip hop culture, creating new sounds, aesthetics, movements, and ways of being Indigenous. This book documents recent developments among the Indigenous hip hop generation.
Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music by John W. Troutman
From the late nineteenth century through the 1920s, the U.S. government sought to control practices of music on reservations and in Indian boarding schools. At the same time, Native singers, dancers, and musicians created new opportunities through musical performance to resist and manipulate those same policy initiatives. This book explores the politics of music at the turn of the twentieth century in three spheres: reservations, off-reservation boarding schools, and public venues.
The Indians' Book: An Offering by the American Indians of Indian Lore, Musical and Narrative, to Form a Record of the Songs and Legends of Their Race by Natalie Curtis
A book created wholly by the American Indian, including songs, myths, drawings, and decorations based on traditional designs. Its musical and folk material derives directly from the Indian oral tradition and is presented exactly as it was recorded. The 149 songs - the traditional music of 18 tribes, include songs of war and love, hunting songs, barter songs, and ceremonial songs. Indian myths have been faithfully taken down directly from Indian story tellers, including creation myths and folktales.
Indian Story and Song from North America by Alice C. Fletcher
Anthropologist Alice Fletcher was a pioneer in the study of Indian music. Originally published in 1900, this book came out of her fieldwork and friendship with the Omahas (among whom she lived), Poncas, Arapahoes, and other tribes. Fletcher provides the stories behind these songs and the scores for authentic Indian melodies in their native language (which are also translated into English). All occasions for singing are covered in this volume.
Indigenous Pop: Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop by Jeff Berglund, Jan Johnson, and Kimberli Lee (Editors)
Popular music compels, entertains, and has the power to attract and move audiences. This book showcases the contributions of American Indian musicians to popular forms of music, including jazz, blues, country-western, rock and roll, reggae, punk, and hip hop.
Intertribal Native American Music in the United States by John-Carlos Perea
The development of a shared musical heritage amongst the various Native American tribes reveals a history fraught with the tension of the give-and-take between cultural maintenance and new cultural creation. In this book, author John-Carlos Perea explores this tension and shows how traditional sounds, such as the powwow song and cedar flute, have developed into increasingly recognizable forms, like Native jazz and rock.
Music, Indigeneity, Digital Media by Thomas R. Hilder, Henry Stobart, and Shzr Ee Tan (Editors)
The essays in this volume offer diverse perspectives on the encounter between Indigenous music and digital technologies. They explore how digital media -- whether on CD, VCD, the Internet, mobile technology, or in the studio -- has transformed and become part of the fabric of Indigenous cultural expression across the globe.
Music and Modernity among First Peoples of North America by Victoria Levine Lindsay Levine and Dylan Robinson (Editors)
This collection of essays is a collaboration between Indigenous and settler scholars from both Canada and the United States. The contributors explore the intersections between music, modernity, and Indigeneity in essays addressing topics that range from hip-hop to powwow, and television soundtracks of Native Classical and experimental music.
Music of the First Nations by Tara Browner (Editor)
This unique anthology presents a wide variety of approaches to an ethnomusicology of Inuit and Native North American musical expression. Contributors include Native and non-Native scholars who provide erudite and illuminating perspectives on aboriginal culture, incorporating both traditional practices and contemporary musical influences.
Natalie Curtis Burlin by Michelle Wick Patterson
Natalie Curtis Burlin (1876-1921) was born to a wealthy New York City family and initially trained for a career as a classical concert pianist. But in 1903, she left her family and training behind to study, collect, and popularize the music of American Indians in the Southwest and African Americans at the Hampton Institute in the belief that the music of these groups could help forge a distinctive American identity in a time of dramatic social change. Michelle Wick Patterson examines the life, work, and legacy of Curtis at the turn of the century.
Native American Music in Eastern North America by Beverley Diamond
This book explores the contemporary musical landscape of Indigenous North Americans. Drawing on case studies from communities in eastern North America such as the Iroquois, the Algonquian, and the Inuit, this book discusses the specific histories and locations of Native North American musical practices including intertribal celebrations, contemporary popular music projects, and other expressive domains such as dance, art, and film.
Native American Song at the Frontiers of Early Modern Music by Olivia A. Bloechl
Olivia Bloechl reconceives the history of French and English music from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century from the perspective of colonial history. She demonstrates how encounters with Native American music in the early years of colonization changed the course of European music history. Drawing on evidence from a wide array of musical, linguistic, and visual sources, this book demonstrates that early American colonization shaped European music cultures in fundamental ways.
The Ojibwa Dance Drum: Its History and Construction by Thomas Vennum
The Ojibwa Dance Drum is widely recognized as a significant ethnography of the Indigenous people from the Eastern Woodlands. Initially published in 1982 in the Smithsonian Folklife Series, this book explains the history and types of drums in Ojibwa culture, their function in Ojibwa song, and the construction of the drum itself.
Opera Indigene: Re/presenting First Nations and Indigenous Cultures by Pamela Karantonis and Dylan Robinson (Editors)
The representation of non-Western cultures in opera has long been a focus of critical inquiry. Within this field, the diverse relationships between opera and First Nations and Indigenous cultures, however, have received far less attention. Opera Indigene takes this subject as its focus, addressing the changing historical depictions of Indigenous cultures in opera and the more contemporary practices of Indigenous artists.
Recording Culture: Powwow Music and the Aboriginal Recording Industry on the Northern Plains by Christopher A. Scales
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. This book is an exploration of the Aboriginal music industry and the powwow social world that supports it. Christopher Scales examines the ways that powwow drum groups have utilized recording technology in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
Rise Up! by Craig Harris
Music historian Craig Harris explores more than five hundred years of Indigenous history, religion, and cultural evolution in this book. More than powwow drums and wooden flutes, Indigenous music intersects with rock, blues, jazz, folk music, reggae, hip-hop, classical music, and more. Combining deep research with personal stories by nearly four dozen award-winning Indigenous musicians, Harris offers an eye-opening look at the growth of Indigenous music.
Sonic Sovereignty: Hip Hop, Indigeneity, and Shifting Popular Music Mainstreams by Liz Przybylski
Sonic Sovereignty explores how contemporary Indigenous musicians champion self-determination through musical expression in Canada and the United States. This book connects self-definition, collective determination, and Indigenous land rematriation to the immediate and long-lasting effects of expressive culture. Przybylski covers online and offline media spaces, following musicians and producers as they, and their music, circulate across online networks.
The Sound of Navajo Country by Kristina M. Jacobsen
In this ethnography of Navajo (Diné) popular music culture, Kristina M. Jacobsen examines questions of Indigenous identity and performance by focusing on the surprising and vibrant Navajo country music scene.
Sound relations: Native Ways of Doing Music History in Alaska by Jessica Bissett Perea
This book delves into histories of Inuit musical life in Alaska to amplify the broader significance of sound as integral to self-determination and sovereignty. It offers relational ways of listening to Inuit music across a range of genres from hip hop, Christian hymnody, and drumsongs to funk and R&B.