Ethnomusicology Lecture: Yurika Tamura, UNC Chapel Hill

What if Indigeneity is sound? This talk introduces Tamura's book project, Vibration of Others: Indigeneity as Sound and Sensation, in which she explores Ainu Indigeneity as sound and corporeal sensation.

The Ainu are Indigenous people of Japan. This simple statement took decades of activism to materialize: Japan officially acknowledged the Ainu as Indigenous people in 2019. Much of the success of Ainu activism is owing to the sounds and sensations they generated in the form of music performance. Ainu musicians and performance activists made their claims audible internationally, and in the process, they also produced a particular Ainu sonic philosophy on Indigeneity, covibrancy, and corporeal ethics.

This project articulates an Indigenous agent ontology specific to contemporary Ainu sounds and argues that Ainu sonic practices allow the Ainu to define Indigeneity in their own terms, contest Japanese ethnonationalism, and extend their ethical philosophy beyond their own politics of sovereignty toward a sensorial onto-ethics of co-survival.

Co-sponsored by the Sound, Music, and Gender Graduate Working Group and the Voice/Noise faculty collaborative group.

This event is free and open to the public. All are welcome.