Inspirational, Colorful, Steady and Participatory

Plucking aimlessly from a Wiki list of nineteenth century American composers, I considered Arthur Finley Nevin.  Spotify has a few of his compositions on a two-volume collection of pieces by the American Indianists.  I hadn’t known there was such thing.  I had a look, and I also had a listen.  These classically trained countrymen of mine from the late nineteenth century attempted to incorporate Native American music into western musical elements, so as to create a truly “American” music.

A quick read failed to uncover how it was they captured, studied, or isolated elements of actual Native American music, beyond mere impressions.  Presumably, early ethnomusicologists of sorts, tried to capture Native American rhythms or calls.  Perhaps its only my modern mind that can’t imagine trying to understand to Native American music without access to a recording.  The composer, diplomat Blair Fairchild, for example has compositions like “The Song of the Grey Hawk” and “The Song of the Grey Wolf.”  Did he draw these from songs he actually heard performed or are these what he imagines, Native Americans conjuring these animals might have sounded like themselves?  A cursory check online leaves all unanswered.

I was fortunate enough to have studied Native American music at Wesleyan University with Professor David McAllester, during what I believe may have been his final year of teaching there on the campus.  He had a range of recordings, which we considered and discussed and I’m tantalized to consider that he’d probably mentioned something about this group of composers, though I have no proper recollection.  Mostly though, we listened to the music of Native people’s.   Wesleyan’s ethnomusicology program was astounding.  We had a spoil of riches and if I’m fair, remember the muscular infectiousness of Ghanaian drumming or the inchoate otherness the Javanese gamelan more poignantly than any of the Native American sounds that we heard.  Still, the professor himself was a rather remarkable ambassador.

I do recall the timbre of his voice more than I can conjure many of his actual insights.  One anecdote I do recall involved his description of attending a Native American religious ceremony.  Inspirational, colorful, steady and participatory he explained to us that to have captured the ceremony with film or on audio would have been crass in his opinion as if he were to have started to do the same in the middle of a Catholic mass.  This made immediate and lasting sense. 

Tuesday, 04/14/19