The Sound of Navajo Country - (Critical Indigeneities) by Kristina M Jacobsen (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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. Through multiple first-person accounts, Jacobsen illuminates country music's connections to the Indigenous politics of language and belonging, examining through the lens of music both the politics of difference and many internal distinctions Diné make among themselves and their fellow Navajo citizens.

As the second largest tribe in the United States, the Navajo have often been portrayed as a singular and monolithic entity. Using her experience as a singer, lap steel player, and Navajo language learner, Jacobsen challenges this notion, showing the ways Navajos distinguish themselves from one another through musical taste, linguistic abilities, geographic location, physical appearance, degree of Navajo or Indian blood, and class affiliations. By linking cultural anthropology to ethnomusicology, linguistic anthropology, and critical Indigenous studies, Jacobsen shows how Navajo poetics and politics offer important insights into the politics of Indigeneity in Native North America, highlighting the complex ways that identities are negotiated in multiple, often contradictory, spheres.

Review Quotes

"Jacobsen is absolutely correct that we should pay more attention to the many forms and uses of voice, including but not limited to music and singing, in analyzing ascriptions and avowals of identity and belonging."--Anthropology Review Database

"One can 'hear' Navajo voices threading throughout Kristina Jacobsen's The Sound of Navajo Country. . . . [The book] should be of interest to students, teachers, and researchers of vocal anthropology, popular music, the social construction of genre, and the contemporary expressive practices of indigenous peoples. It is also a fine teaching instrument for debunking the myth that Native American expressive practices are rooted only in the distant past."--Ethnomusicology

"This book, grappling with the face-to-face interactions of music making, offers a robust framework for considering how Navajo musicians perform and express membership within their community through the lens of country music performance practice. . . . An important contribution to country music scholarship, expanding the geo-cultural boundaries of country music discourse, and indeed broadening our understanding of the genre's narrative and cultural identity."--Journal of the Society for American Music