North American Indigenous song, the sacred and the senses

Authors

  • Byron Dueck The Open University

Keywords:

music

Abstract

How does music shape the experience of the sacred? This chapter looks at two genres of North American Indigenous singing – drum song performed at powwows and gospel singing associated with funerary wakes – and it explores music’s capacity for mediating sacred presences and processes.

Author Biography

  • Byron Dueck, The Open University

    Byron Dueck is senior lecturer and head of music at the Open University, UK. He is the author of Musical Intimacies and Indigenous Imaginaries: Aboriginal Music and Dance in Public Performance (Oxford University Press, 2013), and co-editor, with Martin Clayton and Laura Leante, of Experience and Meaning in Musical Performance (Oxford University Press, 2013). 

References

Becker, H. S. (2008 [1982]) Art Worlds: 25th Anniversary Edition: Updated and Expanded. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Berliner, P. (1993 [1978]) The Soul of Mbira: Music and Traditions of the Shona People of Zimbabwe. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Bithell, C. (1999) Review-essay on Lortat-Jacob, B., Chants de Passion. British Journal of Ethnomusicology 8: 116–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/09681229908567284.

Browner, T. (2002) Heartbeat of the People: Music and Dance of the Northern Pow-wow. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Browner, T. (2009) An acoustical geography of intertribal pow-wow songs. In T. Browner (ed.) Music of the First Nations: Tradition and Innovation in Native North America 131–40. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Bucko, R. A. (1998) The Lakota Ritual of the Sweat Lodge: History and Contemporary Practice. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Butler, M. L. (2000) Musical style and experience in a Brooklyn Pentecostal church: an ‘insider’s’ perspective. Current Musicology 70: 33–60.

Clayton, M. (2001) Introduction: towards a theory of musical meaning (in India and elsewhere). British Journal of Ethnomusicology 10(1): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/09681220108567307.

Coggins, O. (2016) Drone Metal Mysticism, PhD thesis, Faculty of Arts, Open University.

Deloria, E. (1929) The Sun Dance of the Oglala Sioux. The Journal of American Folklore 42(166): 354–413. https://doi.org/10.2307/535232.

Deloria, P. J. (2004) Indians in Unexpected Places. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

DeNora, T. (2000) Music in Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511489433.

Diamond, B., Cronk, M. S. and von Rosen, F. (1994) Visions of Sound: Musical Instruments of First Nations Communities in Northeastern America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dueck, B. (2013) Musical Intimacies and Indigenous Imaginaries: Aboriginal Music and Dance in Public Performance. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199747641.001.0001.

Durkheim, E. (1995 [1912]) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press.

Ellis, C., Lassiter, L. E. and Dunham, G. H. (eds) (2005) Powwow. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Finnegan, R. (2007 [1989]) The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town (2nd edn). Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.

Fox, A. A. (2004) Real Country: Music and Language in Working-Class Culture. Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822385998.

Goertzen, C. (2001) Powwows and identity on the Piedmont and coastal plains of North Carolina. Ethnomusicology 45(1): 58–88. https://doi.org/10.2307/852634.

Gudme, A. K. (2018) A pleasing odour for Yahweh: the smell of sacrifices on Mount Gerizim and in the Hebrew Bible. Body and Religion 2(1): 7–24. https://doi.org/0.1558/bar.36482

Hallowell, A. I. (1955) Culture and Experience. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press. https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512816600.

Hallowell, A. I. (1992) The Ojibwa of Berens River: Ethnography into History (edited with a preface and afterword by J. S. H. Brown). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Bruce Jovanovich College.

Hoefnagels, A. (2002) Powwow songs: travelling songs and changing protocol. World of Music 44(1): 127–36.

Jankowsky, R. C. (2010) Stambeli: Music, Trance, and Alterity in Tunisia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226392202.001.0001.

Landes, R. (1968) Ojibwa Religion and the Midéwiwin. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Levine, V. L. (2013) Powwow. Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online. Retrieved on 1 August 2016 from http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2252169.

Levine, V. L. and Nettl, B. (2011) Strophic form and asymmetrical repetition in four American Indian songs. In M. Tenzer and J. Roeder (eds) Analytical and Cross Cultural Studies in World Music 288–315. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195384581.003.0008.

Lortat-Jacob, B. (1998) Chants de passion: Au coeur d’une confrérie de Sardaigne. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf.

Malinowski, B. (1932 [1922]) Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (2nd impression). London: Routledge.

Mason, L. (1967) The Swampy Cree: A Study in Acculturation. Ottawa: National Museum of Canada, Department of the Secretary of State.

McLuhan, M. and Fiore, Q. (1967) The Medium Is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. New York: Bantam Books.

Nettl, B. (2001) Native American music. In B. Nettl, C. Capwell, P. V. Bohlman, I. K. F. Wong and T. Turino (eds) Excursions in World Music (3rd edn) 255–73. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Nettl, B. (2005) The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-one Issues and Concepts (2nd edn). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Peirce, C. S. (1960) Collected Papers, Vols 1 and 2: Principles of Philosophy and Elements of Logic (edited by C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Perea, J.-C. (2012) The unexpectedness of Jim Pepper. MUSICultures 39(1): 70–82.

Perea, J.-C. (2014) Intertribal Native American Music in the United States: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

Powers, W. K. (1990) War Dance: Plains Indian Musical Performance. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Quick, S. (2016) Review, Musical Intimacies and Indigenous Imaginaries: Aboriginal Music and Dance in Public Performance by B. Dueck. Ethnomusicology 60(1): 178–81. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.60.1.0178.

Rogers, E. S. (1962) The Round Lake Ojibwa. Toronto: Art and Archaeology Division, Royal Ontario Museum, University of Toronto.

Scales, C. A. (2007) Powwows, intertribalism, and the value of competition. Ethnomusicology 51(1): 1–29.

Scales, C. A. (2012) Recording Culture: Powwow Music and the Aboriginal Recording Industry on the Northern Plains. Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822395720.

Turino, T. (1999) Signs of imagination, identity, and experience: a Peircian semiotic theory for music. Ethnomusicology 43(2): 221–5. https://doi.org/10.2307/852734.

Turino, T. (2008) Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Whidden, L. (2007) Essential Song: Three Decades of Northern Cree Music. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.

Published

2018-11-09

Issue

Section

Body and Religion

Categories