Singing an Indian Song


Book Description

One of the foremost Native American intellectuals of his generation (1904-77), D'Arcy McNickleøis best known today for the American Indian history center that carries his name at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and for his novels, The Surrounded, Runner in the Sun, and Wind from an Enemy Sky. A historian and novelist, he was also an anthropologist, Bureau of Indian Affairs official during the heady days oføthe Indian New Deal, teacher, and founding member of the National Congress of American Indians. The child of a Mätis mother and white father, he was an enrolled member of the Flathead Tribe of Montana. But first, and largely by choice, he was a Native American who sought to restore pride and self-determination to all Native American people. Based on a wide range of previously untapped sources, this first full-length biogrpahy traces the course of McNickle's life from the reservation of his childhood through a career of major import to American Indian political and cultural affairs. In so doing it reveals a man who affirmed his own heritage while giving a collective Indian voice to many who had previously seen themselves only in a tribal context.




Singing an Indian Song


Book Description

The National Congress of American Indians. The child of a Metis mother and white father, he was an enrolled member of the Flathead Tribe of Montana. But first, and largely by choice, he was a Native American who sought to restore pride and self-determination to all Native American people. Based on a wide range of previously untapped sources, this first full-length biography traces the course of McNickle's life from the reservation of his childhood through a career of.




She Sang for India


Book Description

A picture book biography about M.S. Subbulakshmi, a powerful Indian singer who advocated for justice and peace through song. Before M.S. Subbulakshmi was a famous Carnatic singer and the first Indian woman to perform at the United Nations, she was a young girl with a prodigious voice. But Subbulakshmi was not free to sing everywhere. In early 1900s India, girls were not allowed to perform for the public. So Subbulakshmi busted barriers to sing at small festivals. Eventually, she broke tradition to record her first album. She did not stop here. At Gandhi's request, Subbulakshmi sang for India’s freedom. Her fascinating odyssey stretched across borders, and soon she was no longer just a young prodigy. She was a woman who changed the world.




Games Children Sing, India


Book Description

Children's songs, singing games, and rhymes, with instructions and background notes for each selection; also includes background on Indian music and history.




Singing the Songs of My Ancestors


Book Description

Ever since she was a small child, Helma Swan, the daughter of a Northwest Coast chief, loved and learned the music of her people. As an adult she began to sing, even though traditionally Makah singers had been men. How did such a situation develop? In her own words, Helma Swan tells the unusual story of her life, her music, and how she became a singer. An excellent storyteller, she speaks of both musical and non-musical activities and events. In addition to discussing song ownership and other Makah musical concepts, she describes songs, dances, and potlatch ceremonies; proper care of masks and costumes; and changing views of Native music education. More generally, she speaks of cultural changes that have had profound effects on contemporary Makah life. Drawing on more than twenty years of research and oral history interviews, Linda J. Goodman in Singing the Songs of My Ancestors presents a somewhat different point of view-that of the anthropologist/ethnomusicologist interested in Makah culture and history as well as the changing musical and ceremonial roles of Makah men and women. Her information provides a context for Helma Swan’s stories and songs. Taken together, the two perspectives allow the reader to embark on a vivid and absorbing journey through Makah life, music, and ceremony spanning most of the twentieth century. Studies of American Indian women musicians are rare; this is the first to focus on a Northwest Coast woman who is an outstanding singer and storyteller as well as a conservator of her tribe’s cultural traditions.




Indian Story and Song from North America


Book Description

"Music enveloped the Indian's individual and social life like an atmosphere."-Alice C. Fletcher. Anthropologist Alice C. Fletcher (1838-1923) was a pioneer in the study of Indian music. Originally published in 1900, Indian Story and Song from North America came out of her fieldwork and friendship with the Omahas (among whom she lived), Poncas, Arapahoes, and other tribes. Fletcher provides the stories behind these songs and the scores for authentic Indian melodies in native language (which is also translated into English). They run the gamut of experience, from making war to making love. Fletcher writes: "Universal use of music was because of the belief that it was a medium of communication between man and the unseen. The invisible voice could reach the invisible power that permeates all nature, animating all natural forms. As success depended upon help from this mysterious power, in every avocation, in every undertaking, and in every ceremonial, the Indian appealed to this power through song." When hunting, he sang to insure the aid of the unseen power in capturing game. When confronting danger and death, he sang for strength to meet his fate unflinchingly. In using herbs to heal, the men and women sang to bring the required efficacy. When planting they sang for abundant harvest. In their sports, courtship, and mourning, song increased pleasure and comforted sorrow. All occasions for singing are covered in this volume. The achievement of Alice Fletcher is discussed in an introduction by Helen Myers, associate professor of music at Trinity College and ethnomusicology editor of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.




East Indian Music in the West Indies


Book Description

Trinidadian sitarist, composer, and music authority, Mangal Patasar once remarked about tãn-singing, "You take a capsule from India, leave it here for a hundred years, and this is what you get." Patasar was referring to what may be the most sophisticated and distinctive art form cultivated among the one and a half million East Indians whose ancestors migrated as indentured laborers from colonial India to the West Indies between 1845 and 1917. Known in Trinidad and Guyana as "tãn-singing" or "local-classical music" and in Suriname as "baithak gãna" ("sitting music"), tãn-singing has evolved into a unique idiom, embodying the rich poetic and musical heritage brought from India as modified by a diaspora group largely cut off from its ancestral homeland. In recent decades, however, tãn-singing has been declining, regarded as quaint and crude by younger generations raised on MTV, Hindi film music, and disco. At the same time, Indo-Caribbeans have been participating in their countries' economic, political, and cultural lives to a far greater extent than previously. Accompanying this participation has been a lively cultural revival, encompassing both an enhanced assertion of Indianness and a spirit of innovative syncretism. One of the most well-known products of this process is chutney, a dynamic music and dance phenomenon that is simultaneously a folk revival and a pop hybrid. In Trinidad, it has also been the vehicle for a controversial form of female empowerment and an agent of a new, more inclusive, conception of national identity. Thus, East Indian Music in the West Indies is a portrait of a diaspora community in motion. It documents the social and cultural development of a people "without history," a people who have sometimes been dismissed as foreigners who merely perpetuate the culture of the homeland rather than becoming "truly" Caribbean. Professor Manuel shows how inaccurate this characterization is. On the one hand, in the form of tãn-singing, it examines the distinctiveness of traditional Indo-Caribbean musical culture. On the other, in the form of chutney, it examines the new assertiveness and syncretism of Indo-Caribbean popular music. Students of Indo-Caribbean music and curious world-music fans alike will be fascinated by Professor Manuel's guided tour through the complex and exciting world of Indo-Caribbean musical culture. Author note: Peter Manuel, an authority on the music of both North India and the Caribbean, is Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Music, and Philosophy at John Jay College. He is the author of several books, including Popular Musics of the Non-Western World (Oxford University Press), Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India, and Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae (Temple University Press).




Songs of Power and Prayer in the Columbia Plateau


Book Description

Songs of Power and Prayer in the Columbia Plateau explores the role of song as a transformative force in the twentieth century, tracing a cultural, spiritual, and musical encounter that upended notions of indigeneity and the rules of engagement for Indians and priests in the Columbia Plateau. In Chad Hamill's narrative, a Jesuit and his two Indian "grandfathers"--one a medicine man, the other a hymn singer--engage in a collective search for the sacred. The priest becomes a student of the medicine man. The medicine man becomes a Catholic. The Indian hymn singer brings indigenous songs to the Catholic mass. Using song as a thread, these men weave together two worlds previously at odds, realizing a promise born two centuries earlier within the prophecies of Circling Raven and Shining Shirt. Songs of Power and Prayer reveals how song can bridge worlds: between the individual and Spirit, the Jesuits and the Indians. Whether sung in an indigenous ceremony or adapted for Catholic Indian services, song abides as a force that strengthens Native identity and acts as a conduit for power and prayer. A First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies book




Sacred Song of the Hermit Thrush


Book Description

Long ago, when the birds had no songs, only man could sing. When the Great Spirit walked on the Earth, he noticed a great silence. He realized the birds had no songs. He devised a challenge and told the birds who ever could fly the highest, would receive a very beautiful song. But not all the birds were honest. In his desire to win the game, the small hermit thrush jumped on the back of the great eagle. The eagle flew higher than any of the birds, but when he came back to land, the Great Spirit said the hermit thrush had gone the highest since he was on eagle’s back. Hermit Thrush was awarded a beautiful song, but in his shame for not being honest, he flew into the deep woods. To this day, you may hear the lovely song of the hermit thrush, but you may not ever see him.




American Indian Songs


Book Description

Presents scores and lyrics for 23 songs from Indian tribes across the United States.




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