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Sender: American Memory Fellows <AMFELLOWS@RS8.LOC.GOV>
Poster: "Elizabeth L. Brown" <ebro@LOC.GOV>
Subject: Omaha Indian Music added to American Memory
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National Digital Library Program - Library of Congress
Omaha Indian Music from the American Folklife Center is
now available on American Memory <http://memory.loc.gov/>.
The latest addition to the American Memory historical
collections documents the music of the Omaha Indian Tribe.
Omaha Indian Music includes 44 recordings made by
Francis La Flesche and Alice Cunningham Fletcher between
1895 and 1897, as well as recordings made by staff of the
American Folklife Center at the 1983 Omaha harvest
celebration pow-wow and the 1985 Hethu’shka Society
concert held at the Library of Congress. Also included with
this collection are interviews with members of the Omaha
tribe that provide background information about the songs
performed, field notes and tape logs made by Center staff
during the 1983 pow-wow, and photographs and related
publicity materials from the various performances. This
presentation was made possible by the generous support of
the Texaco Foundation.
The oldest recordings in the collection were made by Francis
La Flesche, the second son of Omaha chief Joseph La Flesche,
and Alice Cunningham Fletcher, a student of Native-American
life and a champion of the emerging discipline of anthropology.
During the late 1800s and early 1900s, the two worked to collect
materials to document the history of the Omaha people and
eventually published The Omaha Tribe in 1911. They were the
first to document Omaha music on the reservation. In 1985, 44
of their recordings were published as an LP by the American
Folklife Center. The liner notes and other documents related to
this recording are included with the online collection.
In the 1980s, staff from the American Folklife Center visited
the Omaha tribe to present copies of the Fletcher and La Flesche
recordings. During these visits staffers were able to record the
music from pow-wows such as the one in 1983. Users of this
collection can listen to that pow-wow from beginning to end.
Folklife staff were also able to interview members of the tribe
about their music. The interviews provide contextual information
about the songs. Of special interest will be segments from an
interview with John Turner, an elder of the tribe who was a singer
and flute player, and Rufus White, the lead singer of the Host Drum
in 1983. These recordings, which were made a few months before
John Turner’s death and shortly before the 1999 pow-wow, provide
translations and interesting insight into the songs presented.
The Omaha Tribe presently has 4,950 members, with approximately
half living on the 261-mile Omaha reservation located in Macy,
Walthill, and Rosalie, Nebraska.
This collection can be found at the following URL:
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/omhhtml/>.
Please direct any questions to ndlpcoll@loc.gov.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Feb 07 2000 - 16:47:30 EST