Existing comment:
Frances Densmore
Healing Songs of the American Indian
Folkways Records, 1965
Photo by Harris and Ewing, Washington, D.C., 1916
Frances Densmore
The staged photo on this album cover depicts Mountain Chief (Pikuni Blackfeet, 1848–1942) listening to and interpreting a song in Plains Indian sign language for musicologist Frances Densmore (1867–1957).
Densmore specialized in recording and documenting Indigenous North American music at a time when Indigenous languages, traditions, and lifeways were being actively suppressed by the U.S. government. Densmore and her contemporaries were often driven by assumptions that Native traditions would soon disappear. Today, Indigenous scholars use her work as just one part of their ongoing efforts to preserve and strengthen Indigenous traditions. |