More-than-music. Echosystems, acoustemologies and histories of listening from Sápmi

The challenge of defining ‘music’ and ‘sound’ across cultures has been a persistent concern in ethnomusicological and anthropological research from the outset of these fields. Top-down academic applications of these concepts often remain unquestioned, affecting the rich plurality of local classifications for diverse sounding practices alongside their associated bodies of knowledge. This dissertation critically examines the relevance of these overarching categories in the context of Sámi acoustemologies, proposing a novel theoretical paradigm derived from and informed by Indigenous sound ontologies: ‘more-than-music’. ‘More-than-music’ seeks to challenge the ethno-anthropocentric characterizations of sonic relationships across societies and environments which emerge from academic discourses. Its bottom-up nature underlines the necessity to acknowledge the complexity of local onto-epistemologies and the agencies of human and other-than-human beings in academic research practices. To measure the validity and applicability of the ‘more-than-music’ paradigm, this study places emphasis on juoiggus as a Sámi more-than-musical expression and biocultural heritage bridging human performativity and aesthetics with other-than-human voices. The analysis is guided by the research questions: How can juoiggus be explained as something more-than-music? What can we learn from the sonic relationships between individuals, communities and place through juoiggus? How have these interconnections been altered by the transformation of landscapes and traditional knowledge resulted from settler colonialism and environmental crises? While this dissertation builds on mixed methods at the convergence of ethnography and ecology, the methodological choices have been tailored to align with decolonizing research practices appropriate for a thesis developed in collaboration with Indigenous peoples and centered on Indigenous Knowledge. The manuscript is accompanied by a collaborative audio-anthology that serves both as a multimedia output and a means of returning the collected knowledge and field-recordings. The audio-anthology weaves together a plurality of listening experiences and soundscape compositions from Sápmi, integrating the thesis’ contents while delving into the notion of ‘more-than-music’.