HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in French) on Frances Densmore’s Teton Sioux Music.
Grillot, Thomas, 2024. “À la (re)découverte de Teton Sioux Music (1918): métamorphoses d’une archive sonore collectée par Frances Densmore”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.
Minnesota-born Frances Densmore (1867–1957), initially trained in classical music, was converted to anthropological work after discovering the pioneering work of Alice C. Fletcher (A Study of Omaha Indian Music, 1893). Beginning in the shadow of the illustrious activist and Omaha specialist, Densmore’s career was both original and linear. Once she had perfected her particular technique of collection and exhibition, which closely combined ethnography and ethnomusicology, she systematically applied it to dozens of Amerindian peoples across the United States. She also remained faithful throughout her life to recording on wax cylinders. Her work has been the subject of harsh criticism concerning her methods of musical notation and analysis, her generalizations about Indian music, and the ideological presuppositions of her research; but the wealth of material she collected makes her a first-rate resource for many Amerindian teachers. In this challenging article, published as part of the research theme “Transnational Circulations and Social Uses of Anthropological Knowledge in the Americas,” Thomas Grillot (Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, CNRS, France) reveals how the sound recordings of Amerindian music made by anthropologists, including the Lakota recordings made by Densmore between 1911 and 1914, are today caught up in repatriation dynamics very similar to those experienced concerning human remains and sacred objects. This movement needs to be understood in the long-term context of an often ancient circulation of Amerindian sound. As both a medium of anthropological knowledge and a record of cultural and artistic practices, recordings do not freeze sound: they can serve as inspiration for Indian and non-Indian composers alike, allowing them to become a living archive, both a product of cultural consumption and an instrument of cultural and linguistic renaissance. These metamorphoses are made possible by technical manipulations, aesthetic and intellectual judgements and complex political operations. With them, recording emancipates itself from the conditions of its production, while retrospectively validating the salvage anthropology that gave birth to it a century earlier, albeit in a very different historical setting—and political context.
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