Transcriptions of traditional native American music, songs about native Americans, music by native American composers. Reprinted from 17th-20th century publications. Includes bibliographical references (pages 288-292,) and index.
Contents:
Reading American Indian music as social history -- Transcriptions, notations, and arrangement : music examples in facsimile -- Native notations and transcriptions -- Popular arrangements -- Composer arrangements -- Apparatus.
Summary:
This edition explores the history of musical contact, interaction, and exchange between American Indians and Euramericans, as documented in musical transcriptions, notations, and arrangements. The volume contributes to an understanding of American music that reflects our cultural reality, depicting reciprocal influences among Native Americans, scholars, composers, and educators, and illustrating consequences of those encounters for American musical life in general. Culled from a published record of over 8,000 songs, the edition contains 116 musical examples reproduced in facsimile. Included in the volume are the earliest attempts to represent tribal music in European notation, archetypal transcriptions in the scholarly literature of ethnomusicology, and recent contributions by contemporary scholars. Some of the notations shown here inspired composers in search of a distinctively American musical idiom to write works based on American Indian melodies. Others captured the imagination of American school children, whose concept of cultural and musical identity came to be linked with American Indians. Indigenous notations, the work of native scholars and educators, and recent compositions by native composers working in the classical vein also appear in this volume. As a compendium of historic materials, the edition illustrates the development of Euramerican attitudes and approaches to American Indian musics, the infusion of native musics into American musical culture, and native responses to and participation in the enterprise.
Series:
Recent researches in American music ; v. 44 Music of the United States of America ; v. 11
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.