Culture and the Arts: Up to Midterm 10/5/2009 7:25:00 AM
Comes from Algonquian language group (northeastern America) and meant medicine man or
shaman.
Historically: used by whites to mean the meetings where curing took place
Contemporary: any gathering of native people especially where singing is central
Powwow today:
Social gathering at which Native people from several different groups dance together,
using a few basic patterns all groups recognize.
Music stylized, dancing goes through afternoon and evening
Some groups compete for prize money
United Tribes International Powwow
Photos in the lecture taken from the 38th annual United Tribes Powwow in Bismarck,
North Dakota in 2007
At technical college, Indian run non for profit
Representing over 70 tribes, featuring over 1500 dancers and drummers and drawing
over 20,000 spectators
Prizes for events ranged from $1200 for first place to $200 for 5th place awards.
Contemporary Meanings and popularity of powwow
What explains current growth in popularity of the pow wow?
What is it about dance that embodies something important for Indians today?
Powwow is a statement about the reality of life for Native peoples,
Reveals intense cultural meaning in hostile surroundings
Powwow and Identity
Powwow is a contemporary symbol of “indianness” or Indian Identity among Native
people today
Expression of common interest amidst a hostile and domineering broader culture—
o Intertribal connections at powwows—values of reciprocation and cooperation
“often, powwows provide the occasion for Native Americans to develop political and
legal ways to survive in the modern world” (Toelken 1991: 139)
A Dynamic Tradition?
Dynamism of the tradition-use of contemporary symbols and forms important today
to its popularity
Ex: warrior and veteran flag honoring—processional of several flags, U.S. and tribal
flags, reveal the ways that Native people have adapted and thus survived, combining
their interests with those of countries that surround them.
Features, forms and symbols of the powwow
Organized in cirlces-circle as normal pattern of nature
o Everything sunwise, drums organized in circles
o Dancing in circles
Powwow cant begin until drum circles are ready. Begin with this, the center, the
heart
Honor the earth and those who have come before
Features of Dance at the powwow
2 main styles
o war dances and round dances
o round dances-same step in unison
o war dances- dance at the same time to same rythm but use own steps
traditional dance—features of their animal totem on their clothing (from their vision
quest)
fancy dancers more showy—colors, fringe, very energetic dancing—for show and
competition
women dance lightly—symbolize the delicacy and dignity of women‟s place in
nature, very subtle
Competiton and cooperation
Idea of competition at the powwow—competition in dance encouraged at competition
powwows—prize money awarded to best dancers
If gain riches must share them, if not suspected of being a witch
Good of all ideal
Redistribution of goods and belongings
Dance and Identity
Why is dance so important to Native Americans today as a cultural form of
expression
Is dance a symbol of cooperation and reciprocation between diverse groups of Native
Americans today?
Culture and the Arts 10/5/2009 7:25:00 AM
Identity: ongoing sense of who the self is, formed in relation to others
(Mathews 2000)
Constant process
National identity, ethnicity, and the cultural supermarket
Mathews argues, ethnic identity often perceived as more natural
than national identity.
“national identity is being eroded by the cultural supermarket”
through this process, the cultural identity that people accept as
natural becomes more conscious and the cultural identity people
can create becomes wider and wider in possibility
Cultural supermarket
Affluent society who have more “products” available in the world
have greater cultural influence in the world
Wanna be phenomena on the global scale?
He argues we have a range of choices to appropriate yet our
cultural choices must fit into our social world and we must have the
capacity and grace to carry them off.
Diminishing cultures, increasing identities
What factors influence individual positioning in relation to broader
cultures and global identities
o Increased travel
o Uprooting of people through pop. Growth
o Land exploitation through agrobusiness
o Mass media
o Transnationalization of labor
o The movement from traditional to modern or postmodern
Arjun appadurai and “flows” of globalization
Look on line
Relationalism from Comaroff
Identities are relations. Ethnicity has its history in inequalities and
is manifested in daily relationships, especially in relations between
the ethnic group and the dominant power in the nation.
White Shamans and Plastic Medicine Men 1995
Case example for the previous theoretical points
What is Indian identitity and what does it mean when others
appropriate aspects of this identity through the cultural
supermarket?
Culture and the Arts 10/5/2009 7:25:00 AM
Identity Debates
Essentialists
Static
Uni-demensional
Essential
Hunington’s “Clash of Civilizations” is based on this premise
Vs. Constructivists
Invented
Constructed
Imagined
Performed
Attempt to explain variation and emergence of identities through
political, socio-cultural, and economic reference points
Anderson’s premise of “imagined communities”
Constructed Primordiality
Identity constructed by individuals and groups through common
BELIEFS about blood ties, common origins, shared pasts
Today culture studies tend to begin on the micro-level and move outward to
the macro. The same ideas can be applied to the study of group identity
within a family or within multi-local communities of gamers.
How does globalization impact
the “politics of Belonging?”
Key question for the class
How do artists and the arts represent and engage with the “politics of
belonging?” And, what meanings are made in this process?
Culture and the Arts 10/5/2009 7:25:00 AM
Neocolonial conceptions of “the primitive”
Attack on norms and canon of bourgeois society
Communication with subconscious
How does this reverberate with the contemporary Urban Primitive
and urban tribalist movement today?
Cherie Samba
¨Arguably most famous contemporary African artist– Congolese
painter, widely exhibited
¨Contemporary artist and storyteller of modern African narratives
of life
¨Resistance to European aesthetic models
MC Solaar
Senagalese/French rapper
How does hybridization fit here?
Culture and the Arts 10/5/2009 7:25:00 AM
Altered states, spiritual healing, and techno “shamanism”
Rave
o Dance party lasting all night
o Features loud techno music
o Focus on reaching ecstatic states through dance (with/without drugs)
o Began as underground events (ate 1980s in Britain)
o Rave scene in U.S. centered in San Fran, LA, NY, Detroit, and Chicago (early
to mid 1990s)
o Youth subculture (15-25)
Technoshamanism
o DJ as shaman who guides the dancers into trance and gives transforming
experience
o Shaman: spiritual guide in touch with the world of the spirits
o Controls and communicates with spirits in order to guide and heal his/her
people
o Skilled in entering altered states at will
Altered States
o Created at raves through…
Fast rhythmic drumming
Exhaustive all night dancing
Flickering lights
Spiritual Healing
o Ravers report a heightened sense of
Peace, happiness, release of anxiety
Spirituality
Wholeness/self empowerment
Union with others, belonging
Transcendence of individual identity
Values of the Rave
o PLUR Peace, Love, Unity, Respect
Celebrating joy and playfulness
Releasing restrictions on self
Accepting others
Rejecting consumer culture
Rejecting other social rules, finding alternative forms of expression
Social/global change beginning with self
DIY and global movement of music and ideas as part of, “larger
unified planetary network”
Rave Culture: Global Youth Movement?
Culture and the Arts 10/5/2009 7:25:00 AM
David Murphy‟s “where does world music come from”
Taken from ian biddle and Vanessa knights 2007
A contemporary ethnomusicological study of popular music, identity, and
globalization
National identity through music
World Music
Coined in 1980s mainly as a category of non-Western music
“otherness” makes it interesting and unusual
especially prominent with afropop and other African music
African Popular Music
Murphy argues that popular music emerges in contexts where there is significant
separation between producers and consumers of music.
African popular music has been adept at borrowing from both the West and from
other parts of Africa
Popular music and national identity
National identities may be argued as weak in Africa, but this does not mean that
Africans do not have a strong sense of their ethnic identity and their identity as
„Africans‟
Mediation and the World Music Market
Murphy argues: African music heard in Africa bears little relation to the music
marketed in the West, even by the same musicians. Such mediation can produce
whole new styles of music.
Youssou N‟Dour
Born in Senegal
Huuuggeee figure in Senegal and music world
Worked with Peter Gabriel
Albums really just didn‟t sell that well
Global Markets and Global Music
Is world music simply another cultural commodity created by the western pop
market?
Festival in the Dessert