{"id":6013,"date":"2021-11-07T23:13:27","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T05:13:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=6013"},"modified":"2021-12-13T14:59:28","modified_gmt":"2021-12-13T20:59:28","slug":"music-of-north-american-indians-a-textbook-approach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2021\/11\/07\/music-of-north-american-indians-a-textbook-approach\/","title":{"rendered":"“Music of North American Indians”: A Textbook Approach"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>St. Olaf\u2019s Halvorson Music Library is home to an exciting and surprising collection of primary sources that we can and will use as we develop our final mapping projects throughout the remainder of the semester. Recently, in both our projects and class discussions, we have been asked to consider the ways that members of the St. Olaf community should study music made and disseminated by Indigenous people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Accompanying the question of how Indigenous music should be studied, one of the more serious questions that we\u2019ve considered in our class, is how much of the kind of language that we associate with Western art music should we use in our discussions of other musical traditions. Alongside this question, we have emphasized the significance of incorporating the voices of Indigenous practitioners and scholars into our study of Indigenous music. Scholars like <\/span>Trevor Reed<\/span><\/a> or <\/span>Tara Browner<\/span><\/a> are voices that we\u2019ve engaged with as we try to discern the existing scholarly conversation surrounding the study if Indigenous music. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Louis W. Ballard\u2019s 1975 textbook-style guide to <\/span>Music of North American Indians<\/span><\/i> offers an interesting complication to the consideration of the ways that we study music made by Indigenous peoples and the language we should use to talk about it [1]. Ballard\u2019s book provides a map that places various groups of American Indians according to their tribe and affiliation, description and photos of\"\"<\/a> instruments, as well as performance practice and composition-style instructions. Ballard was of Cherokee-Quapaw descent and is known for his compositions that combine elements of traditional Native American music and western classical music [2].\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>As an Indigenous practitioner of Cherokee music, Ballard\u2019s booklet provides an intriguing perspective on how an Indigenous musician might use the language of western classical music to describe one\u2019s own traditional music for a broader audience. In Ballard\u2019s career, he composed pieces like \u201cIncident at Wounded Knee\u201d (1974) which narrated the 1890 massacre of Oglala Sioux at Wounded Knee in 1890.<\/span> This piece premiered with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra<\/span><\/a>. Another one of his pieces,\u201cKatcina Danses,\u201d were inspired by traditional Hopi musical practice.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n