Conference Agenda

This lecture will be pre-recorded and made accessible at 10:45am on Thursday, November 6.

While all cultural creations are located historically, I will reflect on different ways of telling history as evident in repertoires and performances that I have had the privilege of encountering through fieldwork and friendship. I first reference Inuit musicians whose drum dance song repertoire describes experiences on the land in the Canadian Arctic over the past century. Among this repertoire is a song that describes the (frightening) arrival of the first airplane in the singer/composer’s far north community. I will briefly describe a very different mode of history (in Anishnabe communities) through inclusive perceptions of song/dance participants. I will also share a Beothuk song, collected by Frank Speck, a song that challenges histories that claim Beothuk extinction; the song moves through several musical styles that almost certainly exhibit the composer/singer’s intercultural contact throughout her lifetime.