Transposing cultures: The appropriation of native North American musics, 1890-1990.

Abstract

Since the earliest contacts between Europe and North America, Indians have been represented by Europeans and their colonial descendants in music and imagery. Beginning in the late 1880s, Indian compositions in the art music repertoire increased in frequency, paralleling interest shown in Native cultures by American ethnologists, whose research made transcribed Indian melodies and oral texts more readily available. Composers used these melodies and texts in an attempt to create an American national music, authentic in its foundation within indigenous repertoires, but problematic with its use of these materials without an accompanying cultural sensitivity. And although direct quotation of Native melodies became less common after 1925, composers have continued to draw from indigenous cultures by means of appropriating oral texts, historic figures, and ritual forms through the present day. Beginning with the assumption that all forms of appropriation or borrowing by one culture from another are not identical, composers and their works are presented and classified using a framework derived from the semiotic analysis of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). Three categories, iconic, indexical, and symbolic are defined, and musical examples from each are discussed, including works by Burton, Cadman, Busoni, Coleridge-Taylor, Carter, and Oliveros. In addition, art music by a Native North American composer, Louis Ballard, is examined, and his use of Indian melodies compared to that of non-Indian composers.