Create a Reading List and include this title. Select Add to Reading List on the right.
Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) Certificate of Merit in the Best Research in Folk, World, or Ethnic Music category
“While the book makes a clear contribution to the interdisciplinary field of indigenous studies, the work will also be of interest to scholars in cultural anthropology, folklore studies, and the author’s field of ethnomusicology. With this new title, Duke University Press continues its work of publishing important scholarship in Native American and indigenous studies that advances the field while consciously reaching beyond it to make accessible contributions of interest to scholars working outside its boundaries.”—Jason Baird Jackson, Anthropological Quarterly
Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) Certificate of Merit in the Best Research in Folk, World, or Ethnic Music category
“While the book makes a clear contribution to the interdisciplinary field of indigenous studies, the work will also be of interest to scholars in cultural anthropology, folklore studies, and the author’s field of ethnomusicology. With this new title, Duke University Press continues its work of publishing important scholarship in Native American and indigenous studies that advances the field while consciously reaching beyond it to make accessible contributions of interest to scholars working outside its boundaries.”—Jason Baird Jackson, Anthropological Quarterly
"Recording Culture is an exceptional contribution to knowledge about contemporary Native American cultural initiatives. Within studies of powwow music, it is unique in its focus on aspects of CD production and issues related to the commodification of Native culture. It also provides original insights into matters such as the subtleties of drum beats, the evolving distinctions between song forms, and the criteria for judging powwow music. Christopher A. Scales's experience as a producer, as well as an ethnomusicologist, is particularly significant, since the material that he analyzes is not easily accessible outside the recording studio."—Beverley Diamond, author of Native American Music in Eastern North America: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture
"This is a fascinating study, at once deeply historical and thoroughly contemporary. Through his detailed exploration of the shifting ethics and aesthetics of powwow performance, Christopher A. Scales insightfully shows us how the powwow has always been a contemporary practice of identity negotiation."—David W. Samuels, author of Putting a Song on Top of It: Expression and Identity on the San Carlos Apache Reservation
If you are requesting permission to photocopy material for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com;
If the Copyright Clearance Center cannot grant permission, you may request permission from our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).
If you are requesting permission to reprint DUP material (journal or book selection) in another book or in any other format, contact our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).
Many images/art used in material copyrighted by Duke University Press are controlled, not by the Press, but by the owner of the image. Please check the credit line adjacent to the illustration, as well as the front and back matter of the book for a list of credits. You must obtain permission directly from the owner of the image. Occasionally, Duke University Press controls the rights to maps or other drawings. Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions@dukeupress.edu.
For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department.
If you're interested in a Duke University Press book for subsidiary rights/translations, please contact permissions@dukeupress.edu. Include the book title/author, rights sought, and estimated print run.
Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here.
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.