Art of Tradition: Sacred Music, Dance, and Myth of Michigan's Anishinaabe, 1946-1955 |  | Author: Gertrude Kurath
Creator: Michael Mcnally
Publisher: Michigan State Univ Pr
Category: Book
This item is no longer available
Sales Rank: 6959856
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 576
ISBN: 0870138146
Dewey Decimal Number: 299.783330774
EAN: 9780870138140
ASIN: 0870138146
Publication Date: June 1, 2008
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Foreword by Frank Ettawageshik.
Illustrations, notes, references, index.
This book provides new insights
into Native American music and culture: A half-century ago, three writers-all intimately familiar with the Native American culture of
their time and locale-collaborated to produce a 450-page typescript of a study entitled Religious Customs of Modern Michigan Algonquians, together with sound recordings and photographs. Their 1959 work offered a detailed view of the life of Ojibwe and Odawa music, dance, myth, and ceremony at mid-century.
Now framed by a substantive editor's introduction, and published for the first time in book form, this material offers a unique glimpse into a significant and largely overlooked era in the history of North American ethnology and ethnomusicology.
The Art of Tradition documents the complexity of Native life and culture at a critical juncture in Native American history, where the rekindling of pride in Native cultures
characteristic of the later twentieth century met the generation of elders who spent their early years speaking Native tongues but who came of age in boarding schools and amid strong pressures of assimilation. Because
this period was deemed by most ethnographers of the time to be one of acculturation, marking the end of traditional Native cultures, the authors' appreciation for the
integrity of mid-century Native culture stands out markedly from other scholarship of the
day. The songs, dance steps, and stories collected here are evidence of the artful work of maintaining and breathing new life into traditions, often in contexts that seem anything but traditional, by indigenous elders and artists. As the editor notes, there are no Native informants in this study, only collaborators whose lives are shown to be as
resilient as the repertories they performed.
The Art of Tradition is itself a demonstration of the improvisation and resourcefulness that ensured the continuity of Native communities. In documenting the rich ethnographic material with refreshingly little analytical overlay, it serves today as a valuable primary resource on Native religions and cultures.
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