Educational Compositions
In the early 1900’s in the United States, the philosophy behind music education shifted from teaching theory through written exercises to teaching theory through rote song (Parker). This new approach called for short melodies that highlighted and taught different aspects of “western” classical music theory. During this time, there was also a strong desire for music that strengthened the emerging national identity (Tomlins 1927: iii). These two factors pushed publishers of American songbooks to include what they thought were appropriate representations of Indigenous music. The first of these song books was called The Laurel Music Series. Created by William L.Tomlins, it was published in 1901 and contained compositions by Arthur Farwell that were based on transcriptions made by Alice Fletcher (Levine 2002: xxxi). In 1914, the Progressive Music Series edited by Horatio Parker was published. This songbook contained “The Eskimo Hunter” and “The Indian Song,” both of which had English lyrics. “The Eskimo Hunter” was based on an arrangement by John Phillip Sousa of transcriptions made by Franz Boas that were originally published in his book, The Central Eskimo. In many cases, the music listed in these musical readers as ‘Indian Folk Song’ were altered to fit a major or minor tonality in order to teach western music theory. The resulting compositions, while made digestible for colonial ears and eyes, had little to no resemblance of the music they claimed to represent.
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Francis Densmore and Alice C. Fletcher both published books based on their fieldwork that were meant to be used in schools. Fletcher published her book Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs in 1915. The purpose of this book was to help children, and Americans in general “learn to feel at home with the winds, the clouds, the fields and the woods” by learning about the “ancient people” who lived on the land originally (Fletcher 1915: 3). Here, her use of the word “ancient” completely disregards the continued existence of Indigenous peoples and plays into the common belief at the time that Indigenous peoples and cultures were disappearing which was used as a justification for salvage ethnography. In the first chapter of the book, Fletcher describes not being able to hear the melodies in Indigenous Peoples music until her “Indian friends” sang to her while she was ill. After this experience she says she “never failed to catch the hidden melody” (Fletcher 1915: 4). With this statement, she shows how she made the decision to emphasize the parts of the music that she struggled to make out over the “tumultuous din” (Fletcher 1915: 4), referring to the non-western qualities of Indigenous sounds. Additionally, she explains her choice to add words to melodies, even when there were none there to begin with, because “unaccustomed as we are to the use of songs that have no words…we would lose much pleasure when singing them. To obviate the perplexities arising from the Indian’s peculiar treatment of words and to make clear the meaning of a song, words have been supplied” (Fletcher 5). Despite these actions of cultural appropriation and cultural erasure, she acknowledges that what she has presented in the book does not “stand alone or apart from the ceremonials or pleasures of which they form an essential feature” (Fletcher 6). She also states that anyone participating in the dances, for which she wrote instructions in a published book meant to be consumed by a western audience, “should never attempt to imitate what is supposed to be the Indian’s manner of singing or his dancing steps and postures…the result would probably be an unmeaning burlesque” (Fletcher 8).
Contrastingly, Densmore's Indian Action Songs published in 1921 specifically calls for “Pantomimic Representation in Schools and Community Assemblies” (Densmore 1). Using her field recordings and experiences from her time spent with the Chippewa, Densmore created a short play complete with songs, actions, and explanations. It was published by the American Ethnology Society and permission to use the melodies, which had been previously published, was granted by the chief of the society at the time, Jesse Walter Feweks. Notably, there is no mention of permissions granted by the tribes from which the information was taken in the first place. There is a long history of Indigenous knowledge and music being appropriated for use in schools. Even to this day, the practice continues. While it is important to recognize and learn from Indigenous knowledge, it is damaging when such knowledge is taken from its original context without permission and altered to be digestible for non-Indigenous ears for the benefit of non-Indigenous people. It is important to learn from Indigenous knowledge but only when it is done in a collaborative way with Indigenous people at the center. To see some examples of how to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into educational settings please visit Steps to Revise a Lesson Plan and Indigenous Storytelling withing Educational Contexts.
Works Cited
- Densmore, Francis. 1921. Indian Action Song. Boston: C.C. Birchard & CO.
- Fletcher, Alice. 1915. Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs. Boston: C.C. Birchard & Company.
- Levine, Victoria Lindsay, ed. 2002. Introduction from Writing American Indian Music: Historic Transcriptions, Notations, and Arrangements. Middleton, Wis.: Published for the American Musicological Society by A-R Editions, Inc.
- Parker, Horatio; McConathy, Osbourne; Birge, Edward; and Meissner, Otto W. 1916. The Progressive Music Series Teacher's Manual. Boston, New York, Chicago: Silver, Burdett, and Company.
- Tomlins, W.L. The Laurel Song Book. 1927. Boston: C.C. Birchard & Company.
