In the workshop element of our lecture on decolonisation we were tasked with looking into a research resource and presenting it to the class. I chose this short essay by Renata Yazzie on Norient. https://norient.com/renata-yazzie/through-space-and-time
She writes about powwow singer Joe Rainey and what music means to indigenous people. (I rather ignorently only learned just then that powwow was an indigenous word). How when she was far from home her Navajo identity was reaffirmed when she tuned into Navajo radio station KTNN 660 AM.
In many cases indigenous languages dont have a word for music and songs are language rather than music – both moral and aesthetic.
For Indigenous people listening serves as a stregthening and relationship-building act with everything around them. “We listen through space and time to transport ourselves to a place that encapsulates the feelings and emotions our parents and their parents might have felt.” This sense of tradition and interconnection through families, evoking and affirming their belonging is particularly touching. That even though their land has essentially been snatched from them, they still feel such connections to each other, history, culture and land.
Listening to more of Joe Rainey’s album, Niineta I was struck by the combination of modern bassy production with his traditional powwow singing at points creating exceptional intesity eg. in the song ‘jr. flip’. Yazzie reflects on the calmer ‘ch. 1222’ reflecting on a memory of the journey inbetween two distinct indigenous listening experiences.