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Sounding Decolonial Futures: Decentering Ethnomusicology's Colonialist Legacies

Alice Cunningham Fletcher (1838-1923)

Alice Cunningham Fletcher (15 March 1838-6 April 1923) was an early fieldworker and collector of Indigenous sonic practices. Trained in archaeology and ethnology, Fletcher is renowed as one of the very first ethnologists to conduct fieldwork among Indigenous peoples in the settler state of the U.S. and engage musical practices in their context. She first visited the Omaha peoples in 1881. At first, she engaged their sonic practices through the act of transcription, rendering complex practices into "Western" staff notation. Later, she employed wax cylinder phonograph technology to document, study, and preserve them.

She was employed by the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University and later the Bureau of American Ethnology, which was part of the Smithsonian Institution. She was a member of the American Folklore Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Women's National Indian Association.

Important moments in her career:

in 1881, she started fieldwork with the Omaha, marking the beginning of her collaboration with Francis La Flesche
in 1888, she reached out to Prof. John Comfort Fillmore, requesting his assistance in approaching and transcribing Indigenous materials. They remained in collaboration until his death in 1898.

in 1893, she published A Study of Omaha Indian Music acknowledging with La Flesche a co-author. This was considered to be first systematic ethnography on Indigenous music in the settler state of the U.S.
- This publication included "A Report on the Structural Peculiarities of the Music" by Fillmore
- All 92 transcriptions are presented in "Western" staff notation and virtually all are harmonized by Fillmore
- As Pisani writes,

This book was particularly significant for musical composition because it included transcriptions by the music historian and prototheorist John Comfort Fillmore, who proposed ways in which monophonic Indian chants could be harmonized and, as he saw it, made more palatable to "cultured tastes." (Pisani 2005: 168)

in the same year, she "delivered papers [drawing on her studies of North American Indians] at three of the international congresses (music, anthropology, and religion)" at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (Pisani 2005:174).
- it should be noted that a young Frances Densmore was in the audience, having learned of Fletcher's work during piano studies in Boston in 1888
in 1898, she presented at the Congress of Musicians at Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition in Omaha, along with La Flesche and Fillmore.
- Several Omaha performed, in coordination with their talks, largely "for an audience composed largely of trained musicians"
- More significant, however, was the evening concert "devoted to compositions 'founded upon Indian themes,' so the [Musical] Courier reports, and included 'the famous 'Indian Suite' recently composed by [Edward] MacDowell and a symphonic poem [Hiawatha] composed by Ernest Kroeger of St. Louis.'...

the Omaha Congress was probably the first occasion that scholars and ethnologists heard Indian tribal themes transformed into iconic concert works" (Pisani 2005:175-6)

in 1900, she published Indian Story and Song from North America (1900), which included thirty songs and accompanying stories about them. Contrasting with The Study of Omaha Indian Music, this publication was designed not for scholars, but public consumption.

Other key contributions:

in 1888, she transcribed around 300 tunes by encouraging Omaha visiting Washington, D.C., to sing for her
over her lifetime, she recorded 300+ wax cylinders
a progressive in her time who lobbied for Indigenous rights in Washington, however misguided some of those policies now seem from contemporary perspectives
active as a suffragist
Secretary, Association for the Advancement of Women, 1873-76
President, Women's Anthropological Society of America, 1890-99
Department of lnterior consultant, World's Columbian Exposition [i.e. Chicago World's Fair ], 1892-93
President, American Folklore Society, 1905

Biographical data informed by

McLean, Mervyn. 2006. Pioneers of Ethnomusicology. Coral Springs, FL: Llumina Press.
Pisani, Michael V. 2005. Imagining Native America in Music. New Haven: Yale University Press.

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Transcription Practices 13 The history and legacy of transcription practices used for indigenous music plain 2022-06-07T20:20:03+00:00
The transcription practices used for indigenous musics in the settler states part of North America evolved drastically over time. Some of the earliest transcriptions of indigenous music were done by French music scholars during the 17th century. These tended to be in western styles, leaving out details that could not be adequately portrayed by the transcription techniques current at that time. Because so many details were left out, these transcriptions portray indigenous music as simplistic, or what they might have called “primitive” and “uncivilized.” This can be seen in a transcription done in 1741 of a piece listed as “Tabagia Song”.
Though there are some forms of notation that attempted to depart from the standard western staves in order to more accurately capture how the music sounded, such as graphic notation, most music relied on staff notation. Some transcribers, like Alice Fletcher, wrote detailed summaries to accompany their transcriptions in order to provide some context about the cultural aspects or unique tonal qualities that could not be transcribed. Others, for example, put rhythmic details or vocal effects above or below the staff for readers. These techniques attempted to maintain some authenticity to the original music, but most other transcribers abandoned any notion of attempting authenticity for accessibility to western classical musicians because they didn’t have the skills to transcribe beyond the familiar system.
Alice C. Fletcher was well known for her transcriptions which are regarded as some of the earliest significant transcriptions of indigenous music. She began transcribing indigenous music during her first trip to the Omaha and Sioux reservations in 1881, beginning by transcribing some tunes by ear and later from phonograph recordings. When getting ready to publish her work, Study of Omaha Indian Music (1893), she reached out to John Comfort Fillmore to assist with the accompanying transcriptions as she was not confident in her skills (Levine, 2002). When Study of Omaha Indian Music was later published it included a “Report on the Structural Peculiarities of the Music” written by Fillmore. Fillmore, a notable arranger in his own right, attempted to increase interest in Native American music by making it “fit” into the euro american music style. He adjusted certain pitches in order to make the music easier to play by musicians trained in standard European music and for listeners to digest. He also provided many harmonizations of tunes transcribed by Fletcher, which were published in that 1893 volume and later in Indian Story and Song (1900).
Despite the inadequacies of western notation, the transcription techniques established during this time period set a precedent for transcribing music outside canonical Euro American traditions that lead to problematic thinking that can be seen in music to the present day. Techniques like alterations to fit the European standard staff and rhythm, providing minimal cultural context, and arrangements for piano accompaniment continued to plague such adaptations of music. Transcriptions of North American indigenous sonic practices as a whole, starting with and shaped by the work done by Fletcher and Fillmore with Omaha and Sioux music, created a dynamic where indigenous music was a novelty to be altered and absorbed at the whim of the Euro-American musical world. As the techniques of this time period continued to be used, the social dynamics they were born out of were continually reinforced. The legacy of the transcription practices discussed above can be seen in musical studies that continue to be dominated by an exclusively Euro-American and/or White perspective and problematic approaches to music not traditionally seen in the Euro-American canon.
Works Cited
- Fillmore, John Comfort. 1893. “Report on the Structural Peculiarities of the Music” from Alice C. Fletcher with Francis La Flesche, A Study of Omaha Indian Music. Cambridge, Mass. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. 59-77.
- Fletcher, Alice with Francis La Flesche. 1893. A Study of Omaha Indian Music. Cambridge, Mass. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.
- Fletcher, Alice C. and La Flesche, Francis. 1911. "The Omaha tribe." in Twenty-seventh annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1905-1906, 17–654. Bureau of American Ethnology.
- Levine, Victoria Lindsay. 2002. “Reading American Indian Music as Social History” in Writing American Indian Music: Historic Transcriptions, Notations, and Arrangements. Middleton, Wis.: Published for the American Musicological Society by A-R Editions, Inc.
- Oldmixon, Mr. (John), 1673-1742: The British Empire in America: Containing the History of the Discovery, Settlement, Progress and State of the British Colonies on the Continent and Islands of America (second edition, corrected and amended, 2 volumes; London: Printed for J. Brotherton et al., 1741), illust. by Herman Moll.
Harmonization of Indigenous Material 6 An explanation of the ways Fillmore harmonized and arranged indigenous materials plain 2022-06-07T20:26:27+00:00
John Comfort Fillmore (1843-1898), an early American music theorist, was one of the most highly renowned American scholars of his time. In many sources, such as the Wisconsin Historical Society, Fillmore is referred to as a “one of the country's leading music theorists.” Fillmore was what McNutt refers to as a “pioneer ethnomusicologist” (1984); he was familiar with standard notation and able to transcribe the music that was being recorded. However, in practice, Fillmore’s “study” of Indigenous music was exclusively based on his training in European music traditions and reflected the ideology of social Darwinism that justified his arguments of natural harmonic sense.

Fillmore was one of the first people--and arguably the most prominent--responsible for applying the harmonies of European art music to Indigenous melodies and he used this practice to hypothesize about Native Americans’ ideas of beauty. In his collection and harmonization of Indigenous music, Fillmore worked with many of the leading ethnologists of the time. His initial contact was with Alice Fletcher who reached out to him in 1888 for advice on transcription. He ended up being harmonizing some 90 songs which were published in Fletcher's A Study of Omaha Music (1893). He also worked with Franz Boas when he was the “assistant chief of the department of anthropology at the Exposition," meaning the Columbia Exposition in Chicago in 1893, where Fillmore recorded and transcribed music by the “Navaho, the Kwakiutl, and other peoples on the Midway Plaisance” (McNutt, 1984). Fillmore’s career in applying harmony to Indian songs was inaccurate, at best. His method of transcription, while heinous on its own, simply reflects the colonial attitude towards possessions of non-white people. Because Fillmore’s target audience was white society, there was no intention of accuracy in this type of extraction. Melodic and harmonic features of the songs that Fillmore collected were considered to be “discrepancies,” and he believed that melody evolved directly into harmony, rather than considering the possibility that it would evolve into other forms, or into nothing else at all. Colonialism in the form of modification of culture is the principle of these transcriptions, in that it refuses to acknowledge that cultures different from the dominant one are equally important, legitimate, and respectable. However, when analyzing these types of materials, we must acknowledge and understand context. Jesse Walter Fewkes, a white American ethnologist and anthropologist who, like Fillmore and Fletcher, was similarly responsible for the recordings and transcriptions of Indigenous songs, remarked “I have looked forward with great interest to a visit to some of those tribes which still remain in approximately the same condition that they were when first visited by white men” (Fewkes, 1890). Because this form of extraction was not the more violent and brutal kind that had, in Fillmore’s lifetime, recently taken form in the American slave trade and Indian Removal Act, and because this form of extraction acknowledged that cultures and people could exist and thrive without being white, Fillmore, Fewkes, and Fletcher would have considered themselves different from most white folk and as progressives in their field. However, this does not justify their actions in profiting off of Indigenous culture. Rather, Fillmore arguably diminishes the impact of this work by dismissing the importance of his relationship to Indigenous culture as a white male scholar.

Sources
- Fewkes, Jesse Walter. 1890. “On the Use of the Phonograph Among the Zuni Indians.” The American Naturalist 24(283):687-691.
- Fillmore, John Comfort. 1893. “Report on the Structural Peculiarities of the Music” from Alice C. Fletcher A Study of Omaha Indian Music. Archaeological and Ethnological Papers of the Peabody Museum, vol. 1, no. 5. Cambridge, Mass. Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. 59-77.
- McNutt, James C. 1984. “John Comfort Fillmore: A Student of Indian Music Reconsidered.” American Music 2(1).:61-70.
Natalie Curtis (1875-1921) 3 An overview of Curtis' life and career, along with an analysis of it's larger impacts and implications. plain 2022-06-08T16:06:16+00:00
Natalie Curtis was born in New York City in either 1875, according to Carl Rahkonen, or 1876, according to historian Michelle Patterson. She came from a “...close, well-connected family and relatively wealthy family…” (Patterson, 2010, 438). She initially trained to be a concert pianist at the National Conservatory in New York, while also traveling abroad to study with well known composers, Feruccio Busoni and Alfred-Auguste Giraudet in Berlin. After returning from Europe to the United States, she went on a trip to Arizona which “...roused her interest in Native American cultures” (Rahkonen 1998:511). Once she returned home to New York, from the Southwest, she decided to change her career course, leaving her family and training for what Curtis calls “...the self appointed task of recording native songs” (1913:623) Patterson states Curtis approached her work with the intent of promoting Native American music and by sharing the value of indigenous people and their culture with white audiences. “Native Americans often used public performances of music as means of engaging with white audiences and conveying ‘Indianness’” (Patterson, 2010, 421)

Curtis conducted her own fieldwork where she would live amongst the Indigenous people she was studying. Rahkonen says Curtis first used a phonograph to record songs but later “...relied on her informants singing a song several times so she could make a faithful transcription” (1998: 513). She also engaged in advocacy work, one example being a personal plea she made to Theodore Roosevelt, a friend of her family, where she was able to end government policy which prohibited the use of native languages and songs in schools on the reservations.

Curtis became a widely acknowledged expert on indigenous music and folklore with the 1907 publication of The Indians' Book, a collection of more than 200 songs from 18 tribes (Rahkonen 1998, 511). The majority of The Indian’s Book was printed with no accompaniment, which had been a standard of Curtis’s publications before as Curtis did her best not to add or alter her transcriptions of songs. Maureen Salzer refers to these transcriptions as “Translations of native verbal art…” and makes the claim that the published texts have a problematic relationship with their original verbal sources and are, in most cases, sufficiently removed from accurate translation of representation to be considered Native” (Salzer, 2010, 79).

Natalie Curtis was definitely influenced by the work of Alice Fletcher and Frances Densmore, who were more well known and well documented. Due to her unexpected death at age 46, Curtis had a much smaller volume of published materials. Like Curtis, Fletcher and Densmore were white women who shared similar experiences when they were first exposed to Indigenous music and felt that it was in some way their calling (Rahkonen 1998, 511).

In her article "The Female Sound Collector and Her Talking Machine," Roshanak Khesti touches on this “fantasy of sound collecting” (2015, 16) and makes the claim that in all these practices of recording or sound collecting Indigenous music, one thing remains the same: the one collecting the sound is a white woman. Khesti describes this as “The ascension of white, female, comparative musicologists in the public sphere as savior to 'disappearing' Native American sounds, along with the attendant power that yielded for her….” (2015, 28). Khesti identifies the problematic nature of these transcription practices, the first being the presence of white saviorism, the idea that Ingenious people need white people's help or “rescue.” Khesti also touches on how a lot of these women were using Indigenous people, music and culture, a place they knew would accept them, for their own gain or career advancement. She identifies the “archetype of the upper class, white, female comparative musicologists spurned by her male university colleagues and banished to “Indian country” to practice her craftsman, a profile that describes many early comparative musicologists.” (Khesti, 2015, 17)

The work of Natalie Curtis, along with her contemporaries, may have been done with the intention of both aiding and advancing Indigenous people and their music but that does not mean these transcription practices did not engage in any harm. When reading these translations with a critical lens, and an informed perspective on colonialism and indigenous survivance, one can identify the way in which “...the published texts have a problematic relationship with their original verbal sources and are, in most cases, sufficiently removed from accurate translation of representation to be considered Native.” (Salzer, 2010, 79)

Bibliography
- Burlin, Natalie Curtis. 1907. “The Indians' book an offering by the American Indians of Indian lore, musical and narrative, to form a record of the songs and legends of their race.” New York: Harper.
- Curtis, Natalie. “A Plea for Our Native Art.” The Musical Quarterly 6, no. 2 (1920): 175–78.
- Curtis, Natalie. "The Perpetuating of Indian Art." The Outlook, 22 October 1913: 623.
- Rahkonen, Carl. “Special Bibliography: Natalie Curtis (1875-1921).” Ethnomusicology 42, no. 3 (1998): 511–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/852852.
- Khesti, Roshanak. 2015. "The female sound collector and her talking machine” Modernity's ear: listening to race and gender in world music. New York: New York University Press. 15-38.
- Patterson, Michelle Wick. “The ‘Pencil in the Hand of the Indian’: Cross-Cultural Interactions in Natalie Curtis’s ‘The Indians’ Book.’” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 9, no. 4 (2010): 419–49.
- Salzer, Maureen. “Native Presence and Survivance in Early Twentieth-Century Translations By Natalie Curtis Burlin And Mary Austin.” Western American Literature 39, no. 1 (2004): 79–103.

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