Audible Ancestors is an exemplary study of how ceremonial music and dance articulate and sustain Indigenous continuity across colonial and national borders. Through meticulous ethnography, theoretical rigor, and profound ethical care, Luis Chávez-González reveals how tamborazo grooves, song, and tastuán dance performances function as technologies of memory, sovereignty, and situated knowledge. Bridging ethnomusicology, Native American studies, and Borderlands theory, the author advances the concept of 'sovereign acoustemology' to show how music renders Indigenous ancestry audible-and therefore susceptible to be felt-across Mexico and its diaspora. Eclectic, yet cohesive in method, the book will appeal to scholars interested in decoloniality and to readers seeking to understand how musical sounds mediate history, migration, and Indigenous self-determination in Mexico, the United States, and beyond.

Juan Diego Díaz, Associate Professor of Music, University of California, Davis, USA

In Audible Ancestors, Chávez-González dances and sings an important contemporary contribution to Indigenous studies of sound and movement into being, refusing colonial assumptions and reframing a brilliant interdisciplinary group of influences to amplify Tamborazo music, dance, and memory.

John-Carlos Perea, Chair of Ethnomusicology, University of Washington, USA