Music is a fundamental attribute of the human species. Virtually all cultures, from the most primitive to the most advanced, make music. It’s been true through history, and it’s true throughout an individual’s lifespan…
— from an article published by Harvard Medical School.
I was a bit surprised to see the doctors at Harvard making a distinction between “primitive” and “advanced” cultures, in an article about music and health. The more I learn about the world, and about cultures, and about people, the less faith I have in the idea of an “advanced culture”.
I was researching music and health, yesterday, for a few reasons, I guess.
Some of the notable ‘happenings’ here in Pagosa Springs during 2023 had little relationship to what we typically refer to as ‘music’. But some were indeed ‘musical’, and a few of those come to mind as I write this editorial.
Spanish Fiesta. Pagosa Folk & Bluegrass Festival. Performances by the Pagosa Dance Academy students. Musical theater performances by Thingamajig Theatre Company, Curtains Up Pagosa, and Pagosa Springs High School Drama Club. Concerts by the Community Choir and the Instrumental Music Society. Free concerts in Town Park, hosted by the Town of Pagosa Springs. 19th Hole concerts, hosted by various local non-profits. Performances at the Archuleta County Fair. The Four Corners Folk Festival…
And of course, people singing in church on Sundays.
Speaking personally, many of my most enjoyable moments during 2023 arose while performing music with friends… typically at food and drink establishments, and typically involving popular songs dating from the 1960s and 1970s.
Other enjoyable moments came while writing here in the Pagosa Daily Post about the political issues in my favorite community.
I suppose there is a hidden ‘musicality’ to the act of writing, although most people would probably don’t perceive any actual ‘music’ generated by an online essay about a Town Council meeting. I have a pet theory, however, that language is also music, and music is also language. Not necessarily a theory embraced by scholars and experts, but it’s part of my own peculiar worldview, and I’m sticking to it.
I spent some time online, yesterday, watching a Zoom webinar from two years ago, recorded during the peak of the COVID crisis. (Was it really only two years ago? Seems like ages since I last wore a paper mask.) The webinar presenter was jazz musician and musicologist Jessica Bissett Perea, who was sharing some ideas from her new book, Sound Relations: Native Ways of Doing Music History in Alaska, Oxford University Press, 2021.
Dr. Bissett Perea’s book — her first book — won the 2023 Irving Lowens Book Award from the Society for American Music and the 2023 International Council for Traditions of Music and Dance Book Prize. I’ve not read this book, but it’s available through a number of university bookstores. Stanford. MIT. University of Washington. UC Davis. And of course, through Amazon. Various bookstores are sharing this book description:
‘Sound Relations’ delves into histories of Inuit musical life in Alaska to register the significance of sound as integral to self-determination and sovereignty. Offering radical and relational ways of listening to Inuit performances across a range of genres — from hip hop to Christian hymnody and traditional drumsongs to funk and R&B — author Jessica Bissett Perea registers how a ‘density’ (not difference) of Indigenous ways of musicking from a vast archive of presence sounds out entanglements between structures of Indigeneity and colonialism.
The word ‘Indigeneity’ is new to me.
Dr. Bissett Perea identifies as many things, including as a scholar, and also as a member of the Dena’ina cultural group, considered by some scholars to be part of a larger group spread across much of Canada and the interior of Alaska: Athabaskan Indians. She was born in Anchorage, Alaska, and spent time growing up among her mother’s family in south-central Alaska, north of Anchorage, before heading for the Lower 48 to earn various academic degrees in Ellensburg, Washington; Reno, Nevada; and Los Angeles, California.
Dr. Bissett Perea’s lecture had been posted to Vimeo.com by a organization called ‘Thinking Spaces’.
I’d been sent to the Vimeo.com website by my daughter Ursala, who is working on her Masters of Fine Arts degree at the Institute of American Indian Art. Like Dr. Bissett Perea, Ursala comes from a blended cultural background — English, Scottish, German on her father’s side; Filipino, Tlingit Indian, German on her mother’s side. Ursala is also a musician, but not a musicologist.
And like Dr. Bissett Perea, Ursala is intrigued by, and concerned with, the idea of ‘Indigeneity’, which might relate to the idea that people descended from Indigenous ancestors bring something special to the table.
That table being, the vast melting pot of cultures and values we call the United States.
But as I said, the word is new to me.
Apparently, Jessica Bissett Perea specializes in upright bass, and in playing improvisational jazz.
My daughter Ursala is lead singer in a ‘punk’ band.
Neither of these particular musical styles are derived from Alaskan Native traditions, so I find it interesting that both of these women are exploring the idea of ‘Indigeneity’ in their research and in their art forms.
As mentioned, Dr. Bissett Perea identifies as “Dena’ina” on her web page. The colonial term ‘Athabaskan’ does not appear on her personal web page.
Many years ago, when I lived in Alaska and had a regular gig designing the posters for the annual Alaska Folk Festival, I heard about the “Athabaskan fiddlers” — a Native American cultural tradition based mainly around Americana, Country Western, and Bluegrass music.
The traditions are changing, as suggested by this 4-minute YouTube video.
We the People — here in Pagosa, and outside in the larger world — continue to blend our musical styles, our cultural styles, sometimes gracefully, and sometimes gracelessly. Joyfully, or painfully, or without really noticing. In harmony, or in discord.
If my theory is valid — that language is music, and music is language — then the less-happy events that took place during 2023, in Pagosa Springs, and around the world, could be shared in a minor key…
…and the happier events could be sung in a major key?
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.