Making Music Indigenous by Joshua Tucker

There’s Reservation Dogs, FX’s ingenious black comedy co-created by Muscogee and Seminole filmmaker Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, the first mainstream TV show with an all-Indigenous writer’s room, now in its critically acclaimed second season. The past two years have seen a parade of overdue firsts.

“This is just shattering so many excuses for so long that have erased Native people,” said Crystal Echo Hawk, a member of the Pawnee Nation and the president and CEO of IllumiNative, an Indigenous women-led research and advocacy organization. Taken together, the summer of 2022 has marked a watershed moment for Indigenous representation in US pop culture, which for decades has slighted or misrepresented Indigenous people, if it acknowledged their existence at all. Tucker argues that by following the musicians that have championed chimaycha music in its many forms, we can trace shifting meanings of indigeneity-and indeed, uncover the ways it is constructed, transformed, and ultimately recreated through music.Any one of these options alone would be remarkable, given that as recently as two years ago, there was not a single Indigenous lead character on US television, let alone three series and a hit film predominantly starring Indigenous people. This musical representation of indigeneity not only helps shape contemporary culture, it also provides a lens through which to reflect on the country’s past. In Making Music Indigenous, Joshua Tucker traces the history of this music and its key performers over fifty years to show that there is no single way to “sound indigenous.” The musicians Tucker follows make indigenous culture and identity visible in contemporary society by establishing a cultural and political presence for Peru’s indigenous peoples through activism, artisanship, and performance. But, in contemporary Peru, indigenous chimaycha music has become a wildly popular genre that is even heard in the nightclubs of Lima. When thinking of indigenous music, many people may imagine acoustic instruments and pastoral settings far removed from the whirl of modern life.

Making Music Indigenous by Joshua Tucker