The intertribal pow-wow is the most widespread venue for traditional Indian music and dance in North America. Now in paperback, Tara Browner's Heartbeat of the People is an insider's journey into the dances and music, the traditions and regalia, and the functions and significance of these vital cultural events.

"A truly significant contribution to the field . . . promises to be the most comprehensive and detailed source available on the pow-wow, including an excellent compilation of information on its origins as well as its various styles of music and dance."--Victoria Lindsay Levine, author of Writing Indian Music: Historic Transcriptions, Notations, and Arrangements

"[Heartbeat of the People] is crucial because it subverts simplified stereotypical interpretations, demonstrating that pow-wow culture is multifaceted, sometimes conflictive, and always in process, shifting, transmuting. The book is a window, in effect, to a major contemporary cultural expression emanating from the Native communities of the North."--Inés Hernández-Avila, member of the Nez Perce nation from Nespelem, Washington, and associate professor of Native American studies at the University of California, Davis.

Tara Browner is an associate professor of ethnnomusicology and American Indian studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a contributor to I See America Dancing, and has given papers (with demonstrations in costume and regalia) on pow-wow at the Society for American Music and other organizations. She is Oklahoma Choctaw, and currently dances in the Women's Southern Cloth tradition.

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Series:
Music in American Life

Subjects:
Music / Native American Studies / Indians of the Americas / Dance

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