About:

Chris Scales is a Professor of Ethnomusicology in the College of Music and an affiliated faculty member in the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program at Michigan State University. His research and teaching interests include North American Indigenous music and dance, southern Appalachian music, music and technology, intellectual and cultural property, and the North American popular music industry. His book, Recording Culture: Powwow Music and the Aboriginal Recording Industry on the Northern Plains (Duke University Press, 2012), focuses on contemporary Northern powwow culture and musical creation both on the powwow grounds and in Aboriginal recording studios, specifically engaging the effects of technology and mass mediation on powwow performance aesthetics. His work has appeared in the Ethnomusicology Journal, The World of Music Journal, the Canadian University Music Review, and in several edited volumes, including the latest edition of the well-known undergraduate world music textbook Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World’s Peoples (ed. Jeff Todd Titon, Schirmer/Cengage Learning, 2016). 

Professor Scales has also been active collaborating with Native musicians and has produced, recorded, or performed on several commercial powwow and “Contemporary Native music” recording projects. His more recent recording and production work has expanded to include several traditional, folk, and popular music performers and groups in Lansing and the greater mid-Michigan area.

An active musician, Professor Scales performs traditional southern Appalachian and Irish music on fiddle, banjo, guitar, and mandolin, as well as Shona mbira music from Zimbabwe, playing mbira dzavadzimu.