Sounding Identities

David Samuels - University of Massachusetts

Abstract: Shifting ideologies and practices around the voicing of identity have opened up new questions about the relationships between “language” and “culture.” Focusing on contemporary vocal practices (speech and song), this paper explores the cultural and political struggle over what “language” is for in the San Carlos Apache community. It also explores the struggle to find a language in which to express the contemporary sense of comembership in a historically meaningful social formation. Through a discussion of a number of strategies for the production and circulation of voiced identities, the paper uncovers shifting relationships between semantic and indexical domains of cultural expression. Further, political and historical consciousness in the San Carlos community simultaneously recognizes and seers the naturalness of the iconicity between expression and identity.