In this thoughtful and informed discussion, Christopher Scales examines how, why, and with what consequences contemporary Northern Plains powwow music is performed and recorded. At the center of the discussion is the tension that emerges when singers, recording studios, and audiences encounter what Scales describes as “the transformative effects on powwow music aesthetics and social practice as musicians move from performing on reservations and on powwow grounds to working at urban recording studios and record labels” (3). For by going into the studio, drum groups become part of what Scales calls a “recording culture” that leaves singers and studio owners alike “enmeshed in a network of discourses about ethics, power, the relationship between ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition,’ and racial and ethnic identity” (3). In Scales's hands, the discussion extends well beyond the powwow grounds; this is a conversation about indigenous modernity.

Music matters deeply in the powwow communities where Scales conducted his fieldwork, and one of the book's great strengths is its sure-handed treatment of powwow culture and of the song traditions at its heart. The book's first three chapters provide a nuanced overview of Northern Plains powwow culture in Canada and the United States that contextualizes singing traditions and practices. Chapter 1 adroitly describes competition and traditional powwows, and introduces readers to the forms of gathering and the ranges of expression and performance that frame most dances. Scales notes, however, that while contest and traditional dances share some practices, sights, and sounds, there are important distinctions that define two different powwow worlds with regard to audience, singing, dancing, experience, expectations, and meaning.

These distinctions become more apparent in chapter 2, “Powwow Songs: Aesthetics and Performance Practice.” Here, Scales argues that competition dances have had a discernible effect on the recording industry and the powwow world at large by fostering very powerful aesthetic and performative norms, especially with regard to song selection and singing styles. The songs heard at contest dances, writes Scales, create “a more standardized set of aesthetic preferences for singers and dancers,” and they “delineate a stylistic universe for powwow recordings” (63). Moreover, drum groups that excel in competition tend over time to dominate both the contest and recording scenes “since creating and selling recordings have become regular parts of the process of professionalization demanded by singing competitions” (63). Scales also recognizes a generational fault line that calls attention to young singers who are technologically savvy, committed to the powwow trail, and open to innovative ideas. “Northern competition powwow culture has, in a very real sense,” he notes, “become synonymous with Native youth culture” (110). Scales closes his discussion of powwow culture with a chapter titled “Drum Groups and Singers,” in which he deftly examines the dynamics of two drum groups and their day-to-day (or perhaps dance-to-dance) lives. Here we are introduced to issues and experiences that rarely show up in discussions of powwow culture, including economics, travel, the social structure and hierarchy of drum groups, and gender roles.

The chapters in Part Two (“The Mediation of Powwows”) shift the discussion away from the powwow grounds and into the recording studio. The goal here is to understand how concerns about context, performance, and meaning, on the one hand, and a nearly endless range of technical possibilities, on the other hand, must be carefully reconciled. By taking powwow music out of its original context as a live performance at the powwow grounds, the recording studio threatens to reduce fundamental aspects of powwow singing. “Liveness,” for example, is an important aesthetic consideration for many singers who insist that “the sound of the powwow is really what needs to be captured” (238). Recording engineers, on the other hand, driven by “an ideology of high fidelity” aimed at “the accurate and detailed sonic reproduction of a performance” (238), often find themselves attracted to a different set of artistic values and goals. For Scales, such distinctions raise important points about social power as singers and engineers negotiate how recordings will sound. “Who has the power,” he asks, “to decide what liveness sounds like and how it is produced?” (240). This is not a trivial concern, for as Scales reminds us, these songs are ideological discourses about place, people, history, memory, and representation. In the end, it's a constant negotiation shaped by cultural, technical, personal, and economic issues. Scales suggests that the drum groups who go into the studio are often guided by the desire “to create recordings that take advantage of contemporary recording technology and the machinations of the music industry, while linking themselves to the cultural authenticity of the powwow grounds” (256–57).

This is an important, far-ranging discussion that deepens our understanding of powwow music in new and important ways. These recordings are at one and the same time traditional practices that continue to have deep meaning, and products that likewise have deep social, cultural, and symbolic significance for indigenous modernity.