|
|
 |
|
|
| Posted 05.15.08 |
Wesleyan Recording Accepted Into National Registry
|
A Navajo sacred ceremony recording by the late David McAllester, professor
of music and anthropology, emeritus, was accepted into the 2007 National
Recording Registry.
The recording, titled “Navajo Shootingway Ceremony Field Recordings
representing the David McAllester Collection (Recorded by David McAllester
1957-1958),” was one of 25 new additions to the registry, announced May 14.
The registry is online at
http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/.
“McAllester’s recording is listed among such luminaries as Fiorello
LaGuardia, Michael Jackson, Ronald Reagan, and Kitty Wells,” says Alec
McLane, music librarian and director of Wesleyan’s World Music Archives. “It
may be the only record of a deeply sacred Navajo healing ceremony in the
late 1950s.”
The recording, which is housed in the World Music Archives, is of the
Navajo’s Shootingway ceremony, one of the most complex in the Navajo
ceremonial system. It includes the nine-day ceremonial event, detailed
discussions about preparations, procedures, sacred paraphernalia, as well as
the reciting of all of the prayers and singing of all of the songs in order.
In addition to the Shootingway recordings, McAllester's collection includes
eight different versions of the lengthy Blessingway ceremony, several other
traditional ceremonies, and many examples of contemporary genres in which he
was also interested.
McLane had been in touch with the National Recording Preservation Board at
the Library of Congress for several months, trying to find a suitable
collection among David McAllester’s huge body of recorded material. With the
help of Charlotte Frisbie, who collaborated with David on the book Navajo
Blessingway singer: the autobiography of Frank Mitchell, 1881-1967 (Tucson:
University of Arizona Press, 1978), it was decided to focus on the
Shootingway ceremony.
In 1957-58 McAllester took a sabbatical from Wesleyan and traveled to the
Southwest on a Guggenheim grant. Most of his work involved recording Navajo
music, including a film of Frank Mitchell’s Blessingway ceremony, a copy of
which is held in Wesleyan’s Special Collections & Archives. That led to his
meetings with other Navajo singers, including Ray Winnie, whom he recorded
in 1957 performing the full Shootingway ceremony.
Winnie’s recording was done primarily as a demonstration, not as an official
healing ceremony, so McAllester next decided to seek out an occasion for the
real event. This led to his recording in June of 1958 of Diné Tsosi
performing a full ceremony for a relative of both Ray Winnie and Frank
Mitchell.
“The Shootingway can be performed in a one-night, five-night, or full
nine-night version,” Frisbie explains. “Shootingway has numerous branches,
can be either male or female, and it can be performed with a wide variety of
associated rituals, sandpaintings and the like, all of which are negotiated
by the patient, that person’s family, with the singer when that person is
hired. The singing is accompanied by an inverted basket drum and drumstick
of plaited yucca leaves.”
The World Music Archives holds McAllester’s 23 original tape reels recorded
during the Diné Tsosi ceremony, and an additional set of 16 tape reels of
the Ray Winnie ceremony. These recordings are available for listening at the
archives, located on the third floor of Olin Library.
“We recognize that the performances of these ceremonies were highly
personal, directed at the healing of particular people and their families,
and that David McAllester was very privileged to be given the opportunity to
record them,” McLane says.
|
|
By Olivia Bartlett, Wesleyan Connection editor |
|
|
 |
|
|
