Dylan Robinson, Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020), ISBN: 978-1-5179-0768-6 (hc); ISBN: 978-1-5179-0769-3 (pb).

Abstract

Yagheli du. Jessica Bissett Perea sh’iyi qilan. Dena’ina eshlan shida. K’enaht’ana eshlan shida. K’enakatnu shgu shqayek qilanda. Sh’eldinna Dghelay Teht’ana eshlan shida. Shqizdlan Dgheyaytnu, shunkda shtukda ała Niteh shgu koht’an ghat’na gheluda. Xučyun, Chochenyo Ohlone Ełnena, shgu yesduda. Putah-toi, Patwin Ełnena, k’a shgu yesduda. Chin’an hech’ qeshnash hu. Dena’inaq’ dudeldih shit. Greetings, I am thankful if I can write to you this way; I am learning the Dena’ina language. My name is Jessica Bissett Perea and I am Upper Tikahtnu (Cook Inlet) Dena’ina and an enrolled member of the Knik Tribe from southcentral Alaska. I was born in Dgheyaytnu, or what is currently known as Anchorage, and raised on my ancestral homelands. I currently live on Chochenyo Ohlone lands or Xučyun (currently known as Berkeley, California). I currently work on Patwin lands or Putah-toi (currently known as Davis, California). In academic contexts, I identify as an interdisciplinary musician-scholar. I am a double bassist and vocalist with earned degrees in Music Education (BME from Central Washington University), Music History (MA from the University of Nevada), and Musicology (PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles). I am currently an Associate Professor and Graduate Advisor in Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis, and my three core areas of research expertise include: (1) Indigenous-led research methodologies and theories, including writing and editorial praxes; (2) Indigeneitycentred approaches to performance, improvisation, media, and sensory studies; and (3) arts and activism in North Pacific and Circumpolar Arctic communities specifically, and between Indigenous, Black, and Peoples of Colour communities more broadly. To contextualize this review of Dylan Robinson’s Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies (2020), it is important that I begin with the preceding explanations of (some of) the relationalities I bring to this work. In theorizing ‘a range of encounters between Indigenous song and Western art music (also called classical music or concert music)’ (1) more broadly, or Native North American song and European art music more specifically, Hungry Listening traces a multitude of encounters that require new forms of attention to better account for ‘aesthetic and structural encounters that take place within music composition and performance; listening encounters that take place between the listening