Music of Yup’ik and Cup’ik southwest Alaska music

Summary

Southwestern Alaska connects Yup’ik and Cup’ik community song with contemporary Yup’ik pop, electronic production and rap, wider popular listening and sacred music. Bethel and village networks circulate new music as well as dance repertoire.

Contemporary and trending

Current pop, hip-hop, alternative rock and country provide the shared listening base. Local indie, rap and roots artists and contemporary Native musicians add regional connections. Recent Alaska broadcaster playlists and schedules demonstrate contemporary circulation; they are snapshots of programming, not surveys of every resident. Older favorites remain part of current listening.

History

Southwestern Alaska connects Yup’ik and Cup’ik community song with contemporary Yup’ik pop, electronic production and rap, wider popular listening and sacred music. Bethel and village networks circulate new music as well as dance repertoire. Historical community repertoires, migration, local teaching and modern recording and broadcasting all contribute. A traditional territory, an artist’s birthplace, a song’s origin and its present-day circulation are different facts.

Genres

Pop; Country; Alternative rock; Hip-hop; Alaskan indie and alternative; Alaskan roots and Americana; Alaskan hip-hop; Yup’ik contemporary music; Northern Indigenous gospel; Yup'ik drum song.

Artists

Contemporary Alaska connections include Quinn Christopherson, Medium Build, Ava Earl, Blackwater Railroad, Tayy Tarantino, Alaska Redd, Byron Nicholai and Qacung. Broader pop and country selections include artists heard on current Alaska radio, alongside the community performers identified in the linked genre articles.

Boundary definition and research

Southwestern Alaska connects Yup’ik and Cup’ik community song with contemporary Yup’ik pop, electronic production and rap, wider popular listening and sacred music. Bethel and village networks circulate new music as well as dance repertoire. This approximate frame overlaps other music regions. Indigenous Peoples and Languages of Alaska (Krauss, Holton, Kerr and West, 2011; GIS update 2013) represents traditional territories around 1900 and is used only as a geographic starting point. Current broadcaster, community and performer evidence informs the listening mixture. Modern urban frames are authored from connected towns and venues. The existing hosted land outline is retained with a small coastal selection tolerance. The footprint is not a political, ethnic or measured audience boundary.

Footnotes

GIS and language data attribution: Alaska Native Language Center and UAA Institute of Social and Economic Research; CC BY 4.0. The separately licensed map image is not reproduced.