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Hearing Urban Indigeneity in Canada: Self-Determination, Community Formation, and Kinaesthetic Listening with A Tribe Called Red
Abstract
A Tribe Called Red (ACTR) is an Ottawa-based DJ collective known for “powwow step,” a blend of powwow music and dubstep. ATCR’s Electric Pow Wow is an intertribal space to negotiate and assert a twenty-first-century urbanbased Aboriginal identity. As the pounding beat resonates, participants both listen through the body and listen to the body in shared kinaesthetic listening, celebrating their physicality and rejecting historical regulation of the Aboriginal body. This article addresses tensions between the “traditional” and “modern” and analyzes three musical examples to demonstrate how ATCR musically encodes a modern, urban-based indigeneity.