Powerful Feelings Recollected in Tranquility Literary Criticism and Lakota Social Song Poetry

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Summer 2000 Powerful Feelings Recollected In Tranquility Literary Criticism And Lakota Social Song Poetry R. D. Theisz Black Hills State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Theisz, R. D., "Powerful Feelings Recollected In Tranquility Literary Criticism And Lakota Social Song Poetry" (2000). Great Plains Quarterly. 2157. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/2157 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. POWERFUL FEELINGS RECOLLECTED IN TRANQUILITY LITERARY CRITICISM AND LAKOTA SOCIAL SONG POETRY R. D. THEISZ The anthropologist and ethnomusicologist Powers' judgment, it seems to me that the con William K. Powers, in his Beyond the Vision: ceptual seams between anthropology, ethno Essays on American Indian Culture, laments that musicology, and musicology are rather the discipline of ethnomusicology-and mu formidable. sic pedagogy-with its emphasis on the vocal At the same time, from the endogenous and instrumental "art music" traditions of point of view of the indigenous traditional musically literate peoples has been lax in ac song composers, performers, and audiences, cepting anthropological theory. Thus, Powers the theories and methods of all three of these points out that ethnomusicology, where it is disciplines must necessarily too often appear concerned with the music of oral, indigenous na'ively uninformed, pejorative, arrogant, ex cultures, adheres to outdated theories on ploitative, and even bizarre. "primitive" music and displays a telling ab The aim in the analysis below is to bridge sence of ethnographic abilities.! Reflecting yet another obstructive conceptual seam that has insulated two disciplines or subject areas from each other, that of western literary criti R.D. Theisz is Professor of English and American cism and Native American oral song poetry. Indian Studies at Black Hills State University in Spearfish, SD. He teaches courses on American Indian Dearie, each time I come to this place, Literature, Literary Criticism, and American Indian I cry to myself in secret, Cultural Studies. His publications include Buckskin day and night. Tokens: Contemporary Lakota Oral Narratives, Songs and Dances of the Lakota (with Ben Black -Lakota song poem Bear Sr.), Standing in the Light: A Lakota Way of Seeing (with Severt Young Bear Sr.), and Raising The late Michael Dorris in his 1987 essay Their Voices: Essays on Lakota Musicology. "Indians on the Shelf' stated that "learning about Native American culture and history is different from acquiring knowledge in other [GPQ 20 (Summer 2000): 197-210] fields, for it requires an initial, abrupt, and 197 198 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2000 wrenching demythologizing."2In his meaning, oral narrative has held a favored position in it seems clear that the elimination of perva the emerging field of oral Native American sive falsehoods, of omissions and distortions, literature. Most scholars seem to display a must precede any new knowledge in the area greater affinity for oral narrative forms, so that, of Native American studies. Like other disci by comparison, Native American oral song plines, such as women's studies, African poetry has aroused little interest. Song poetry American studies, and Latino/a studies, appears to present special difficulties for liter American Indian studies in general is a revi ary study. sionist undertaking. Moreover, this arduous Compared to the study of oral narrative "demythologizing" is nowhere more necessary forms, the study of Native American oral song in the area of interdisciplinary American In poetry as literature has been undertaken by only dian studies than in the academic stance on a select few. So, in spite of admonitions such and treatment of traditional Native Ameri as Ruoffs to study the oral literatures of Na can song poetry. The myths that have pre tive Americans as a "vibrant force that tribal cluded appropriate study of Native American peoples continue to create and perform," and song texts as literature result from several bi her view that songs "are central to all aspects ases and failings. of ceremonial and nonceremonial life," the Examining this array of biases and failings literary study of Indian oral song poetry has of American Indian studies in great detail not kept pace with the study of narratives, would digress from the thesis of this analysis. oratory, and ritual drama which have enjoyed Nevertheless, a quick glance at the mistreat considerable and energetic attention.4 ,ment of traditional song poetry in the perti The issue must be raised whether song po nent enterprises such as literary interpretation etry in its use of language, in its incorporation and the study of Native American artistic ex of melody and musical instruments, or even in pression will ground the direction of the later its connection to dance and its performance exploration. The terms "song poetry" and "song mode of representing human experience is poems" are used to refer to the two central viewed as subliterary. Perhaps literature dimensions of the gente-the performance and scholars find such performance elements be literary dimensions. yond their interest or even competence. The Oral texts of the Native American literary focus of the following spotlight on Native tradition have historically been the domain of American oral song poetry would therefore anthropology, ethnomusicology, and folklore. highlight what Richard Macksey calls the "on The first and perhaps major rationale for rel tological question" in literary criticism, by egating oral texts outside the literary canon which he means que~: ioning the nature and appears to be the very nature of oral literary mode of existence of a literary work and "the expression. The relationship of orality to lit philosophy oflanguage and mimetic represen eracy "problematizes" the traditional Western tation."5 So far, the literary study of oral song conceptualization ofliterature, which has most poetry appears to have generally avoided the typically stressed the "close connection with question or declined to engage song poetry as 'literate' forms and 'literate' cultures."3 Yet, if a fitting subject. orality were the only challenge, Native Ameri Two examples can serve to illustrate this can oral narratives, life stories, and other oral reluctance. The 1994 Dictionary of Native narrative forms would also linger in critical American Literature includes the following in limbo. This is not the case. troductory explanation by its editor, Andrew Even when oral texts received greater liter Wiget: ary attention in the works of Dell Hymes, Jerald Ramsey, Karl Kroeber, Richard Bauman, An On the other hand, some topics that would drew Wiget, and others in the 1960s and 1970s, have been especially interesting in conjunc- LITERARY CRITICISM AND LAKOTA SOCIAL SONG POETRY 199 tion with the study of oral narratives were the prism of literary theory, literary history, not included. While it would seem logical and literary criticism. to have a general article on "Songs," for Extant ethnomusicological and literary instance, it was clear from the beginning studies of oral song poetry have featured cer that Native American songs from over 350 emonial songs and songs associated with the different tribes did not have as a subject warrior tradition. The "vanishing red man" the same kind of formal coherence that oral myth at the close of the nineteenth century narratives did .... To have included ar- caused a rush to preserve documentation of ticles on song ... would have been to in- the disappearing authentic life of the noble vite their authors to create the most but doomed aborigine, and so the songs of the speculative kind of typology with which to hunt, of the warrior, of the communication frame a brief and spotty discussion of an with the world of the spirits, represented the enormous topic.6 sought-out forms of oral song. Social dance songs, which feature romantic contexts as well Wiget certainly appears to understand the as romantic subjects, were considered to ad significance of song but then abandons any dress baser and more trivial matters and were effort to advance the study of song because it thus not really of interest. The prolific collec would be too "spotty," "fragmented," "com tor and recorder of indigenous music, Frances plex," and interdisciplinary.7 Densmore in her 1918 classic Teton Sioux Another specific dimension of the onto Music, provides a good example of this ten logical dilemma in this regard-one of the dency. Perhaps the romantic focus of social myths, in Dorris's terms-is the very diver song poems was also perceived as evidence of gent conceptualization of the broader field of acculturation and thus tainted by Western Native American oral literature. Even though notions of courtship. some, like Ruoff, recognize the cultural cen trality of songs as the "largest part of Ameri Applying the principles of modern literary can Indian oral literatures,"8 others have theory and criticism to the doubly neglected limited their notion of Native American oral

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