Friendly Alert Instructions for the Music Description Project

Friendly Alert Instructions for the “Music Description Project” are now posted on the course web site

Chapter Seven “All That Is Native and Fine” : American Indian Music, Folk Songs, Spirituals, and Their Collectors

Indian Music • Problems in collection and understanding • Limited / (very) incomplete data • Artificial (staged) vs. Natural (in situ) - fails to account for actual use of music • Native vs. non-native perception - see Chapter 1 (p. 23) on earliest European views • Transcription into European notation - forced into Western theoretical models - pitch & intonation issues • “Savages” vs. “Noble Redskin” (both false)

Post-Civil War Scholarship • Theodore Baker (1851 -1934) - “Über die Musik der nordamerikanischen Wilden” (Leipzig, 1882) • Alice C. Fletcher (1838 -1923), Anthropologist - Field work in Nebraska (1893 and later) - The Omaha Tribe (1911) - Importance of music in rituals/ceremonies • Library of Congress - Alice C. Fletcher - Omaha Indian Music

Alice C. Fletcher Nebraska (1880 s? )

Frances Densmore Fieldwork (South Dakota? )

Recording Indian Songs • Edison Cylinder Machine (used since 1890) • Alice C. Fletcher (c. 1893 on) - but claimed to prefer transcription • Ex. "Ritual of the Maize“ (1893) • Francis Densmore (1867 -1957) (recorded 1907 -1957) - Larry Aitkin on F. D. - the first audio recordings of Native music at LOC - Songs of the Chippewa • "A Buffalo Said to Me“ (LG 7. 1) (p. 147)

Edison Cylinder Machine (c. 1887 -88) “Graphophone”

Arthur Farwell (1872 -1852) • Born in Minnesota • Engineering at M. I. T. • Music study in Boston & Germany • “Indianist” composer • Wa-Wan Press (1901) • Ex. Arthur Farwell American Indian Melodies op. 11

Folk Music • Ethnic Nationalism - (determined by) language, geography, religion, customs • Music as a cultural artifact • Folksong as the product of a “country” (no single creator) • “Das Volk” (The People) • Scientific study/collecting Johann Gottfried Herder (1744 -1803)

Anglo. Celtic Ballads • • Traditional music from the British Isles Disseminated chiefly in Appalachian Mountains Ballads – storytelling songs (strophic) Oral Tradition – never written down

Child Ballads • Francis James Child (1825 -96) - American scholar of English Language - Collector of song texts • The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882 -1898) - 305 Ballads w/ multiple variants • The Child Ballads: 200. The Gypsy Laddie • “Gypsy Laddie” – Jean Ritchie • “Black Jack Daisy” (LG 7. 2) (p. 151 -2) • Cecil Sharp (1859 -1924) - English Folk Song Society (1898) - “…something primitive and genuine…”

American Folk Songs • Phillips Barry (1880 -1937), songcathcer - Communal “re-creation” (including recent songs) - Songs “remade” through oral transmission • Cowboy songs - "Sweet Betsy from Pike" (from 1850 s British) - "Home on the Range" (1872 poem, Brewster Higley [KS]) • Spanish and Mexican-American (Southwest) - Charles Lummis (journalist & collector) - Arthur Farwell, Spanish Songs of Old California - “Es el amor mariposa” (p. 26)