UW Notebook

November 26, 2024

From classrooms to KEXP, UW lecturer shares love of Indigenous music

Every Monday, Tory Johnston welcomes listeners to KEXP’s global Indigenous radio show, Sounds of Survivance.Pixabay

When he isn’t lecturing at the University of Washington or pursuing his doctoral studies at the University of California, Davis, Tory Johnston (Quinault) co-hosts a global Indigenous radio show with Kevin Sur (Kānaka Maoli) on KEXP.

Every Monday between 3 and 5 a.m., he welcomes listeners to Sounds of Survivance, playing cross-continental Indigenous music from a variety of genres. After sunrise, Johnston can be found in the UW’s Department of American Indian Studies, teaching classes like “United States/Indian Relations” and “Contemporary Indigenous Environmental Issues.

For someone who fell in love with music as a child – learning how to play Metallica riffs and listening to everything from virtuosic guitar to jazz – studying and amplifying Indigenous sound represents a full-circle moment.

“I’m interested in what Native music does, meeting Indigenous people where they’re at and conveying the authentic love for sound and music that comes through in their songs,” said Johnston, whose doctoral work in Native American studies at UC Davis focuses on Indigenous sounds and music. “It’s not just like ‘traditional music’ that we play on the show. It’s hip-hop and metal and jazz. There’s just as much of a sort of semantic potency to that as there is in the songs that our ancestors made.”

Johnston was raised in Taholah, Washington, on the mouth of the Quinault River. He graduated in 2015 from the UW, the only school he ever wanted to attend, with a degree in American Indian studies. He saw the department as a way to cultivate a home away from home.

“It was kind of hard reckoning with the idea that all land is Indigenous land, and the UW sits on the dispossessed land of the Coast Salish peoples,” Johnston said. “But I always give thanks to and gratitude toward the people that animate the Native presence in Seattle, including the American Indian Studies Department. The Quinault and other Coast Salish peoples have interacted for thousands of years, so the lands and waters we’re on here are familiar to my ancestors.”

After earning his bachelor’s degree, Johnston worked as an outreach coordinator for the Department of the Interior’s Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations, as well as a Native youth suicide prevention coordinator for the Seattle Indian Health Board. Needing a change, he then decided to pursue a graduate degree at UC Davis.

Tory Johnston is a lecturer in the American Indian Studies Department at the UW.KEXP

Originally, Johnston planned to focus his graduate studies on environmental law and policy before enrolling in law school. That all changed when Johnston met Jessica Bissett Perea (Dena’ina), an interdisciplinary music scholar who then worked at UC Davis and is now associate professor of American Indian Studies at the UW. Bissett Perea’s Indigenous-led and Indigeneity-centered work changed Johnston’s perspective and pushed him to focus his work on Indigenous sound and music.

“Bissett Perea’s work as a musicologist awoke this thing in me, which was this musicality that I’ve had my entire life,” Johnston said. “I’ve always, always loved music, and I’ve always thought deeply about it, too. She showed me those ideas and that way of thinking was possible through an Indigeneity-centered lens.”

On Bissett Perea’s suggestion, Johnston applied for a lecturer position at the UW. Ten days after he was offered the job, another opportunity arose. A friend alerted Johnston that KEXP was hiring a global Indigenous radio DJ. Johnston had never DJed before, but the station was seeking applicants with both scholarly and musical backgrounds. Johnston checked both boxes and, as a bonus, he brought basic knowledge of audio production.

“KEXP has a global audience,” Johnston said. “That’s one of the most humbling things ,is for them to trust me to take the reins and show our thousands and thousands of listeners these Native artists that I love. It’s an absolute joy. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever done in my life.”

Sounds of Survivance is a global Indigenous radio show on KEXP.KEXP

When he hosts, Johnston offers his perspective on what it means to be an Indigenous musician. Indigenous musicians have been invisible contributors to the musical canon of every genre, Johnston said, and representing their genuine, authentic love for both Indigeneity and music ties in with the name of the show: Sounds of Survivance.

‘Survivance,’ a term coined by American Indian studies scholar Gerald Vizenor, represents a combination of survival and resistance. It’s about the continuance of Indigenous stories, and the renunciation of narratives centered around tragedy and victimhood.

“That’s sort of the ethic of the show,” Johnston said. “It’s demonstrating: One, we’ve always been here. Two, we’ve always been making songs. Three, these songs are really beautiful. Let me show them to you.”

Johnston aims to play a part amplifying an Indigenous legacy of sound and artistry that’s been intentionally obscured.

“It’s refusing to let ourselves be erased,” Johnston said. “We mobilize using the same processes that our ancestors did. They gave us this gift of being able to create song, and so we decided to use it. It’s self-determining. It’s personal and collective sovereignty over the ways that we want to sound.”

For more information, contact Johnston at tmaj@uw.edu.