This ethnographic journey into the New York Salsa scene of the 1990s is the first of its kind. Written by a musical insider, and from the perspective of salsa musicians, Sounding Salsa is a pioneering study that offers detailed accounts of these musicians grappling with intercultural tensions and commericial pressures. Christopher Washburne, himself an accomplished salsa musician, examines the organizational structures, recording processes, rehearsing, and gigging of salsa bands, paying particular attention to how they created a sense of community, privileged "the people" over artistic and commercial concerns, and incited cultural pride during performances.

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Listening In, Feeding Back

Organizers:
David Novak, Columbia University, Society of Fellows in the Humanities
den12@columbia.edu
Ana Maria Ochoa, Columbia University, Department of Music
ao2110@columbia.edu

Description:
In recent years, several academic disciplines, including history, anthropology, ethnomusicology, and media studies, have devoted significant attention towards practices of listening. The act of listening is undoubtedly an underexplored dimension of modern sensory experience -- and of modernity itself, which is too often characterized by an overdetermined regime of visuality. What can listening offer to emerging interdisciplinary work on perception, performance, aesthetics, social life, and the circulation of sound media?  read more »

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This article, written by Chie Sakakibara and Aaron Fox, is currently featured on the website of the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium (BASC). BASC is helping to support Aaron Fox and Chie Sakakibara in their research in the North Slope of Alaska. The article includes historical photos as well as photos from Aaron and Chie's recent research trip to Barrow, Alaska.

Further press about the project has been published in The Arctic Sounder (download the pdf). The project has also been mentioned in the "Alaska Newsreader" section of the Anchorage Daily News -- check it out here.

Click on the photo to see a large image of a photo taken by Laura Boulton during November, 1946 of the singers she recorded in Barrow, Alaska. From left to right, the identified singers in the photograph are: Leo Kaleak (seated left), Otis Ahkivgak (standing left), Willie Sielak, Guy Okakok, and Alfred Koonoalak. Not in the photo, but identified on the recordings, are three children: Mary (also known as "Eva") Ahvik, and Harold and Eddie Kagak (identified as "Eddie Orson" in Boulton's notes). Not in the photo, but prominently featured on the recordings, is singer Joe Sikvayugak (spelled "Sikvayunak" in Boulton's notes). This photo appears in two published locations. The version above is copied from Boulton's 1968 autobiography, now out of print, entitled The Music Hunter. A better-quality print was also published, but with extensive cropping, in the liner notes to Boulton's 1955 Folkways recording, now available from Smithsonian Global Sound, The Eskimos of Hudson Bay and Alaska.

If you are a member of the Point Barrow Iñupiat community and are looking for the website mentioned by Aaron Fox and Chie Sakakibara as heard on Earl Finkler's radio show on KBRW on Tuesday morning or at the community meeting at the Iñupiat Heritage Center on Tuesday evening, please click here for the website link.

A username and password are required to access the website. If you did not receive this information personally from Prof. Fox in Barrow, please write to him directly at aaf19@columbia.edu for the password.