Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music, 1879-1934 (review)

Bookended by the prelude at Carlisle, Pennsylvania to what became a system of federal government schools for Indians and the debut of the Indian New Deal, John Troutman explores appearances of a practice of music as political in a context of allotment and assimilation in federal policy targeting Indians. What he unearths from an archive deposited in federal institutions, university and public libraries, and state and county historical societies are traces of Indians who participated through music and dance in an ethically charged tug-of-war with federal functionaries over U.S. policies aimed at separating Indians from their land. Rather than the standardized, submissive Indian devised by lawmakers, political appointees, and federal bureaucrats alike, what Troutman finds instead is a yielding web of law and policy, scripted public expectations, and song and dance types which facilitated a wide range of musical expression among Indians. Thus, this book weighs in on early twentieth-century culture and politics.

In five chapters—one drawing from the context of social dance on South Dakota reservations, another focused on debate in print media, two that derive meaning from federal government schools, and a fifth that elicits understanding from the context of popular music scenes which range from jazz clubs to string quartets-Troutman narrates his telling of music's politics among some Indians. His most compelling chapter is the fifth: "Hitting the Road: Professional Native Musicians in the Early Twentieth Century." In "Hitting the Road" Troutman features five professional musicians among many who have received scant scholarly notice and who "represent a wide range of financial and professional success in their acts and in using their talents to engage federal Indian policy on a local or national level" (202). His clever, largely implicit point in "Hitting the Road" marks his larger proposition: that decisions among federal functionaries tasked with policing Indians were influenced at local levels by growing desires to romanticize rather than demonize Indians, public demands for access to real Indians, and Indians' exploitation of musical arenas for their own ends.

Indian Blues likely will find welcoming readers among non-specialist bookworms. Through a wonderfully fetching, powerfully illustrated, and accessible narrative Troutman weaves a tale for largely overlooked historical subject matter: the practice of music among Indians as a principal means of resisting and reshaping applications of law. Juxtaposing the cruelty of Indian policy and the callousness of popular desires for authentic Indianness with everyday musical acts of Indian accommodation and creativity is Troutman's key contribution to undermining widely resonating notions about Indians.

Indian Blues no doubt will experience a warm, approving greeting from cultural historians who resist theoretical discourse. In graduate seminars on progressivism in U.S. history, Indian Blues could be assigned alongside Philip Deloria's Indians in Unexpected Places (2006), a crossover book that similarly reaches for wider audiences. Together, Troutman and Deloria shed light upon value-laden struggles in expressive culture over differing visions for coexistence in a multiracial society founded in white supremacy and still governed by logics of settler colonization.