{"id":3115,"date":"2024-06-13T00:18:12","date_gmt":"2024-06-13T04:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3115"},"modified":"2024-06-13T00:18:15","modified_gmt":"2024-06-13T04:18:15","slug":"native-america-and-american-music-on-npr-a-battleground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2024\/06\/native-america-and-american-music-on-npr-a-battleground.html","title":{"rendered":"Native America and American Music on NPR: &#8220;A Battleground&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7ZC3NUdjtug?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>This Hamms Beer commercial, which I vividly remember from childhood and our brand-new black-and-white TV, signals \u201cIndian music\u201d with a steady tom-tom beat. The tune (and its tom-tom) adapts the\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=u6F4yzuHJk0\">Dagger Dance<\/a><\/strong> in Victor Herbert\u2019s opera\u00a0<em>Natoma.\u00a0<\/em>The words \u2013 \u201cFrom the Land of Sky Blue Waters\u201d \u2013 reference a once\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CQb8xNZTGJA\">popular concert song<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0by Charles Wakefield Cadman. Both Herbert\u2019s opera and Cadman\u2019s song belong to the \u201cIndianist\u201d movement in American music \u2013 the topic of my latest\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/the1a.org\/segments\/more-than-music-native-american-inspirations\/\">NPR \u201cMore than Music\u201d installment: \u201cNative American Inspirations<\/a><\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis tale in its totality,\u201d as I remark at the top of the show, \u201cis a battleground. It actually holds up a mirror to the discontinuity and mistrust that plague the American experience today. But it also incorporates some pretty remarkable music \u2013 some of which, you might say, is more or less \u2018cancelled\u2019 by present-day sensitivities.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unpacking it all, I confer with Timothy Long, who heads the opera program at the Eastman School of Music. Both his father, who was Muskogee Creek, and his mother, who was Choctaw, spoke English as a second language. His mother had been raised in an Indian orphanage in Oklahoma, after which she was moved to an Indian sanatorium. She was so bored there that she began to listen to Beethoven sonata recordings played by Wilhelm Kempff and Alfred Brendel \u2013 the music with which Long grew up. So Tim Long lives two musical lives. He also prefers not to listen to the Indianist composers. His reasoning, which he eloquently expounds, has nothing to do with \u201cappropriation\u201d or \u201cpermission.\u201d Rather, he says: \u201cWe still don\u2019t get recognition \u2013 we\u2019re not in the history books, people know nothing about us. This really makes it very difficult to me to listen to the Indianists. We were being occupied, and the occupiers were celebrating us with our music.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And yet I have long made <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2019\/11\/americas-forbidden-composer.html\">the music of Arthur Farwell<\/a> \u2013 the most sophisticated of the Indianists &#8212; a cause. He seems to me the closest thing to an American Bela Bartok. And he spearheaded a thirty-year chapter in American music that \u2013 make of it what you will &#8212; is a significant component of our nation\u2019s cultural history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As it happens, the pianist who has most recorded the Indianist compositions of Farwell is herself Native: Lisa Cheryl Thomas, whose ancestry is Cherokee. She uses word like \u201cauthentic\u201d and \u201cinformed\u201d when she discusses Farwell. She also says: \u201cI feel we owe a great gratitude to the [non-Native] ethnographers and to the Indianists, especially Farwell. . . . And it\u2019s my goal to keep promoting this with my concerts so that Native American music has a lasting legacy in the fine arts.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Starting with Louis Ballard (1931-2007) ,whose music I also sample, a growing number of Native American composers have taken up the challenge of marrying Native American sources with the Western concert tradition. On my NPR show, we hear a tribute to Crazy Horse by Jerod Impichchaachaaha&#8217;&nbsp;Tate. It\u2019s performed by Delta David Gier and the&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2023\/09\/shostakovich-in-south-dakota-a-manifesto-for-the-future-of-american-classical-music.html\">South Dakota Symphony<\/a><\/strong>, whose \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2016\/03\/dvorak-on-the-reservation.html\"><strong>Lakota Music<\/strong>&nbsp;<strong>Project<\/strong><\/a>\u201d, now more than a decade old, has fostered musical collaborations with Lakota musicians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I conclude: \u201cWould that a coming to terms with Native America \u2013 with the cultural vigor and desolate ordeal of this country\u2019s first inhabitants \u2013 could enrich a more harmonious America to come. In truth, that day still seems far distant. But we have at least put far behind us the tom-tom beat of that Hamms Beer commercial with which I grew up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>LISTENING GUIDE:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2:06: Victor Herbert\u2019s \u201cDagger Dance\u201d (1911)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>5:30: The Scherzo from Dvorak\u2019s\u00a0<em>New World<\/em>\u00a0Symphony (1893), inspired by the Dance of Pau-Puk Keewis in Longfellow\u2019s\u00a0<em>The Song of Hiawatha<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>7:00: Arthur Farwell\u2019s\u00a0<em>Pawnee Horses<\/em>\u00a0(1904), performed by pianist Benjamin Pasternack<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>8:25: Farwell\u2019s choral\u00a0<em>Pawnee Horses\u00a0<\/em>(1937), performed by the University of Texas Chamber Singers led by James Morrow<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>12:00: An Omaha song recorded in 1895<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>16:05: Art historian Adam Harris on George Catlin\u2019s controversial paintings of Indian life\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>19:25: Lisa Cheryl Thomas on Arthur Farwell<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>20:45: Farwell\u2019s\u00a0<em>Navajo War Dance<\/em>\u00a0No. 2 (1905), performed by Benjamin Pasternack<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>25:30: Timothy Long on the Indianists movement<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>29:05: Charles Wakefield Cadman\u2019s \u201cFrom the Land of the Sky Blue Waters\u201d (1909)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>30:30: Louis Ballard\u2019s\u00a0<em>Devil\u2019s Promenade<\/em>\u00a0(1973), performed by the Fort Smith Symphony conducted by John Jeter<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>32:15: Jerod Tate on Louis Ballard<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>33:40: Tate\u2019s Crazy Horse tribute from his\u00a0<em>Victory Songs\u00a0<\/em>(2013), performed by Stephen Bryant and the South Dakota Symphony led by Delta David Gier<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>37:45: Raven Chacon\u2019s\u00a0<em>Nilchi\u2019 Shada\u2019ji Nalaghali<\/em>\u00a0<em>(Winds that turn on the side from Sun)<\/em>\u00a0(2008), performed by Emanuele Arciuli<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>41:00: Jeffrey Paul\u2019s\u00a0<em>Wind on Clear Lake<\/em>, performed by Lakota flutist Bryan Akipa and the South Dakota Symphony led by Gier<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This Hamms Beer commercial, which I vividly remember from childhood and our brand-new black-and-white TV, signals \u201cIndian music\u201d with a steady tom-tom beat. The tune (and its tom-tom) adapts the\u00a0Dagger Dance in Victor Herbert\u2019s opera\u00a0Natoma.\u00a0The words \u2013 \u201cFrom the Land of Sky Blue Waters\u201d \u2013 reference a once\u00a0popular concert song\u00a0by Charles Wakefield Cadman. Both Herbert\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-Of","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3115"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3119,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115\/revisions\/3119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}