Chamorro country songs
Cross-Cultural translation in post-World War II Chamorro music
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/prbt.v16i1-2.22321Keywords:
Chamorro, country music, cultural nationalism, MarianasAbstract
Scholars of music, culture and history in the Marianas Islands have paid little attention to contemporary Chamorro language music. In part, it has been dismissed on grounds of its 'inauthenticity'. And yet, the music has deep meaning for the generations of Chamorros who came of age in the three decades after World War II. This article addresses challenges to the music's authenticity by situating the practices of adapting foreign songs in the folk culture of pre-World War II Guam. Furthermore, this paper provides both an explanation and a cross cultural context for the particular attraction older Chamorros hold for American country music. Selected Chamorro songs demonstrate ways Chamorro artists adapt and translate American songs in ways that make them more cultural specific but nevertheless point to affinities between working class Chamorros and mainland Americans.
References
Aguon, Katherine. 1979. ‘“The Guam Dilemma” The Need for a Pacific Island Education Perspective’. Amerasia 6/2: 77–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.17953/amer.6.2.g8t85q7w4017x577
Babauta, Leo. 2014. ‘Chester Carl Butler’. Online: http://guampedia.com/chester-carl-butler/ (accessed 1 December 2015).
Bailey, Kim. 1981. ‘Chamorrita Songs: A Surviving Legacy of the Mexican Verso?’ Paper presented at the 26th annual meeting of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Honolulu, Hawai‘i, 16 October 1981. Filed at the Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam.
Castles, John. 1998. ‘Tjungaringanyi: Aboriginal Rock (1971–91)’. In Sound Alliances: Indigenous Peoples, Cultural Politics and Popular Music in the Pacific, ed. Phillip Hayward, 11–25. London and New York: Cassell.
Caton, Nancy. 1965. ‘KUAM’. Pacific Profile, November: 33–36.
Clement, Michael R. Jr. 2011. ‘Kustumbre, Modernity and Resistance: The Subaltern Narrative in Chamorro Language Music’. PhD dissertation, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.
Clement, Michael R. Sr. 2001. ‘The Ancient Origins of Chamorro Music’. MA thesis, University of Guam.
Cobb, James C. 1993. ‘Country Music and the Southernization of America’. In All that Glitters: Country Music in America, ed. George Lewis, 75–85. Bowling Green, KY: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
Curtin, Michael. 1997. ‘Dynasty in Drag’. In The Revolution wasn’t Televised: Sixties Television and Social Conflict, ed. Lyn Spiegel and M. Curtin, 245–64. New York: Routledge.
Davis, Dave. 2010. ‘Stop with the Borrowed Culture’. Pacific Daily News, 7 February. http://archive.guampdn.com/article/20100207/OPINION02/2070312/Stop-borrowed-culture (accessed 30 November 2015).
Dent, Alexander. 2009. River of Tears: Country Music, Memory, and Modernity in Brazil. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/9780822391098
Diaz, Vicente M. 1994. ‘Simply Chamorro: Telling Tales of Demise and Survival in Guam’. The Contemporary Pacific: A Journal of Pacific Affairs 6/1 (Spring): 29–58.
—2010. Repositioning the Missionary: Rewriting Histories of Colonialism, Native Catholicism, and Indigeneity in Guam. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.
Flores, Judy. 1999. ‘Art and Identity in the Marianas Islands: Issues of Reconstructing an Ancient Past’. PhD thesis, University of East Anglia.
—2001. ‘Kantan Chamorrita Revisited in the New Millenium’. In Traditionalism and Modernity in the Music and Dance of Oceania: Essays in Honor of Barbara B. Smith, 19–30. Sydney: University of Sydney.
Fritz, Georg. 1989. The Chamorro: A History and Ethnography of the Marianas, ed. Scott Russell. Saipan: Division of Historic Preservation, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
Kasperbaur, Larry. 1985. ‘New Ethnicity of Guam and the Dynamics of Population Change’. Talk given at the University of Guam, 27 November 1985, video recording, Micronesian Area Research Center, University of Guam.
Kehoe, Monika. 1976. ‘Language and Politics in Guam and Micronesia’. In Oceania and Beyond: Essays on the Pacific since 1945, ed. F. P. King, 34–42. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Lewis, George. 1993. ‘Tension, Conflict and Contradiction in Country Music’. In All that Glitters: Country Music in America, ed. George Lewis, 208–20. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State Popular Press.
Malone, Bill. 2002a. Country Music USA. 2nd rev. ed. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
—2002b. Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’: Country Music and the Southern Working Class. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
McClain, Ernest G., and Robert Clopton. 1949. ‘Guamanian Songs’. Journal of American Folklore (July–September): 217–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/537198
Navy News. 1944–1947. ‘Daily Program Schedule’. WXLI AFRS Guam.
Peck, William. 1982. I Speak the Beginning: Anthology of Surviving Poetry of the Northern Mariana Islands. Saipan: Commonwealth Council for Arts and Culture.
Pecknold, Dianne. 2007. The Selling Sound: The Rise of the Country Music Industry. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/9780822390305
Peterson, Richard. 1997. Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rabon, Francisco. 2007. Bailan i Taotao Tano’: The Chamorro Dance Manual, Chamorro Dances, Costumes, Songs and Chants. Hagatna: Irensia Publishing.
Rogers, Robert. 2011. Destiny’s Landfall: A History of Guam. Honolulu: UH Press.
Santos, Carmen. 1989. ‘Guam’s Folklore’. In Umatac by the Sea: A Village in Transition, ed. Rebecca Stephenson and H. Kurashina, 87–113. Mangilao: MARC.
Souder, Laura Torres Marie. 1992a. Daughters of the Island: Contemporary Women Organizers on Guam. Lanham, MD: University Press of America; Mangilao: MARC.
—1992b. ‘Unveiling Herstory: Chamorro Women in Historical Perspective’. In Pacific History: Papers from the 8th Pacific History Association Conference, 143–61. Mangilao: University of Guam.
—1993. ‘Kantan Chamorrita: Traditional Chamorro Poetry, Past and Future’. Manoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing 5/1 (Summer): 189–92.
Stade, Ronald. 1998. Pacific Passages: World Culture and Local Politics in Guam. Stockholm: Stockholm University.
Stokes, Martin. 1997. Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place. Oxford: Berg.
Thompson, Laura. 1941. Guam and its People: A Study of Culture Change and Colonial Education. San Francisco, New York and Honolulu: American Council Institute of Pacific Relations.
Underwood, Robert. 1978. ‘Hispanicization as a Socio-Historical Process on Guam’. Unpublished manuscript prepared for University of Guam.
—1981. ‘The Role of Media in Small Island Societies’. Pacific Islands Communication Journal 10/3: 60–72.
Weintraub, Andrew. 1998. ‘Jawaiian Music and Local Cultural Identity in Hawai‘i’. In Sound Alliances: Indigenous Peoples, Cultural Politics and Popular Music in the Pacific, ed. Phillip Hayward, 78–88. London and New York: Cassell.
Whitfield, Stephen. 1996. The Culture of the Cold War. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Zolov, Eric. 1999. Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counter Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
