Stó:lō scholar Dylan Robinson’s Hungry Listening is a treatise on how to approach, engage with, and listen to/with Indigenous ways of knowing. One major premise is simple: musical undertakings that involve Indigenous musics and/or musicians have reified and continue to reify colonizing power structures. Nevertheless, what he offers in response is complex and necessarily impartial, since no one answer exists. The decolonizing work remains in the hands (ears?) of scholars, composers, musicians, music critics, and audiences as they grapple with the varying contexts and functions for past and contemporary Indigenous music-making. More generally, such answers could apply to any rethinking of (Indigenous) art and knowledge production. Robinson’s threading of decolonizing approaches together with his analysis of several different musical settings presents a most provocative springboard.
Robinson opens with Canadian composer Murray Schafer’s disparaging depiction of Inuit singing. For those fond of Schafer’s compositions and theoretical ponderings (after all, he did...
