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The Sound of Navajo Country

Music, Language, and Din

Kristina M. Jacobsen

Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 02/2017
Pages: 200
Subject: Social Science, Music | University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9780000000000
eBook ISBN: 9781469631882

DESCRIPTION

In this ethnography of Navajo (Din’©) 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 Din’© 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.

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