Indianism and the Nature/Civilization Dialectic

As I have argued elsewhere, these countries’ European cultural and historical heritage and their postcolonial context influenced their conceptualization of nature and civilization. As a dialectical opposition between the natural geography and resources of the so-called new world and the civilization of the old, this conceptualization extended to the contrast between the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas, with their traditional way of life, and the “modernizing” aspirations of the European colonists. In the second half of the twentieth century, as the United States solidified its hegemonic position, its economic and technological prowess, and its media influence, this dialectical opposition expanded into one of modernity versus premodernity, technology versus authenticity.Footnote ⁸

The underlying ambivalence of U.S. attitudes toward nature emerges also in its treatment of Native Americans and Latin Americans (due to their mixed Indigenous and European ancestry). As Frederick Pike notes:

These conflicting attitudes toward nature were not unique to North Americans but rather were prevalent in Western culture since the mid-nineteenth century, as the spread of industrialization, urbanization, and colonialism increasingly turned nature (and everything related to it) into a powerfully affective symbol, expressive both of nostalgia and danger. The symbolic struggle between civilization and nature emerged throughout Western civilization in the postwar, populist modernisms of the early twentieth century, which idealized rural and/or premodern cultures and minorities. This idealization plays a fundamental role in the development of the U.S.–Mexico relationship.

Since the late nineteenth century, these ideas emerge in the Indianist movement in U.S. art music, evident in works by Arthur Farwell, Henry Gilbert, Edward MacDowell, and others.Footnote ¹⁰ These composers combined melodies derived from ethnographic transcriptions, newly composed themes based on the distillation of features from those “authentic” sources, and generic exoticisms such as those identified by Michael Pisani—gestures that were often based on European folk idioms and served to represent any culture deemed exotic or different. In the “ready-made toolbox of exotica,” Pisani identifies several musical elements including drone fifths, pastoral rhythms, percussive elements, pentatonic or modal scales, chromaticisms, excessive grace notes, and tremolos.Footnote ¹¹

The extent to which Indianism was an extension of Orientalism in general, and Indigenous Peoples just another exotic Other, may be gleaned from the fact that, as Pisani points out, some of Farwell's “Indian” song settings incorporate elements of ragtime and tango, and Harvey Worthington Loomis (1865–1930) combined his interest in Native American song with the explicit use of exoticisms associated with Asian topics.Footnote ¹² Pisani sees a progression in the musical representation of Native Americans. First, composers used generic European exoticisms, such as those employed by MacDowell in the Indian Suite (1897). Later, as a result of the influx of ethnographic research and the increasing importance of the American West as symbol, composers, such as Farwell, became advocates for Indigenous music and culture and wrote “more complex” portraits.Footnote ¹³ Nevertheless, it is clear from Pisani's own observations on Farwell's views of Native American music that composers’ interest in Indigenous music and culture lay primarily in their association with nature, spirituality, and authenticity, as an implied antithesis to modern U.S. civilization.Footnote ¹⁴

Although it seems easy to dismiss these appropriations of Indigenous melodies as acts of cultural colonization or domination, the “Western,” “civilized” elements and the purportedly “exotic,” “primitive” elements coexist in a much more ambiguous relationship. As Ronald Radano and Philip Bohlman argue, various different groups “can potentially share, appropriate, and dominate” music. Moreover,

We can see the “unseating” of the discourse of domination in the frequency with which composers offered their idealized musical “Indian” as an antidote to perceived European decadence. For instance, MacDowell sought to have the Indian Suite performed after years of hesitation, to counter what he saw and heard as Dvořák's superficial “tailoring” of “Negro clothes cut in Bohemia” in the New World Symphony; MacDowell clearly saw Native Americans (“stern but at least manly and free”) as more suitable for the musical representation of the American character.Footnote ¹⁶

Similarly, representations of Mexico in U.S. culture, including art and popular music, repeatedly focus on its Indigenous cultures, their perceived “authenticity,” and their association with nature. Examples of this are found in the works of Aaron Copland who visited Mexico several times at the invitation of Mexican composer Carlos Chávez. On several occasions, Copland expressed his fondness for Mexico, which he regularly associated with its Indigenous heritage, depicting the latter in positive if highly idealized terms. For example, he described Chávez’ works as “superbly Mexican in quality … but Mexican-Indian—stoic, stark, and somber, like an Orozco drawing.”Footnote ¹⁷ Furthermore, on Latin American art music more generally, he believed “the countries with the deepest Indian strain seem to promise most for the future.”Footnote ¹⁸ In a letter to his friend Mary Lescaze (January 13, 1933), he wrote:

Copland's reaction to Mexico is overwhelmingly positive, yet his is an ethnic reading, inhabited by the same assumptions regarding nature and authenticity that, as discussed above, have colored the relationship of white U.S. Americans with both Native Americans and Mexicans.

The connection between Indigenous Peoples of both countries in the U.S. imagination emerges, for example, in Copland's ballet Billy the Kid (1938). Based on the life of the infamous outlaw, the ballet presents an image of frontier life from which Indigenous Peoples have been essentially erased. The only members of the company who are cast in nonwhite roles are the Mexican girls, wearing Indigenous-style dresses and long braids, who dance to a jarabe before the death of Billy's mother. Later, they help him hide from his enemy, Alias, and they eventually mourn his death. They seem to be Billy's only friends. “The Mexican,” coded as female and representative of the natural and authentic life that the pioneers are coming to replace, here substitutes for “The Indian,” who is otherwise absent from the ballet. Undoubtedly, Copland's personal experience of Mexico and his friendship with Chávez influenced his representations of Mexican folk music and his sympathetic treatment of the Mexican girls in Billy the Kid. It is with Billy and his Mexican friends, and not with the pioneers, where the work's sympathies lay. Their exit after Billy's death and before the return of the “Open Prairie” theme, which accompanies the pioneers’ inexorable progress westward, suggests the end of the Mexicans’ authentic way of life.

Other U.S. composers have tackled the subject of Mexico by focusing on its Indigenous historical heritage, including Roger Sessions (Montezuma, 1935–63), Lou Harrison (Song of Quetzalcoatl, 1941), and Philip Glass (Toltec Symphony, 2005), among others. These pieces suggest a complex and largely unexplored musical dialogue on the subject of the binational relationship and are not just about representing the Other, but also the Self, and the ambivalent but rich relationship between the two.

World Music, Authenticity, and the Native American Recording Industry

The same associations between Indigenous Peoples and the tensions between “nature” and “civilization” emerge in the development and reception of both “world music” and the Native American recording industry since the 1980s. As a catch-all term for “non-Western” or “nonwhite,” the world music category reflected not only the increasing availability of recordings from outside the rock/pop North Atlantic mainstream, but also the continuing interest of Western audiences in the symbolism that such music represents—what Radano and Bohlman call “modernity's never-ending quest for the authentic.”Footnote ²⁰ As Simon Frith argues:

Notwithstanding the appeal of “authentic” experiences to the hipster rock aesthetic, the “authenticity” of world music cannot be divorced from its Otherness. As Frith himself acknowledges later in the same essay, “It was soon clear, for example, that ‘the authentic’ worked in retail terms as a redescription of the exotic.” This was possible because of the nature/civilization dialectic:

Frith further argues that by the early 1990s the academic discourse of world music pivoted from concepts of authenticity to “the hybrid.” This argument “defines hybridity as authenticity and implies that musical creativity depends on a free trade in sounds; ‘uncorrupted’ music can now be seen as stagnant music, music constrained by reactionary political and cultural forces.”Footnote ²³

Although hybridity appeals to postmodernist discourses of world music, it is a concept that leads to confusion in the recording industry. Its inability to cope with musics that don't fit neatly into predetermined categories is exemplified by its treatment of Native American musics. The growth of Native American music in the recording industry throughout the 1990s was evident in the creation of the Native American Music Awards, whose first ceremony was held in 1998.Footnote ²⁴ The Grammys added the Native American category in 2000 and televised it for the first time in 2001.Footnote ²⁵ Still, a year later, Catherine Applefeld Olson of Billboard noted that “even in a time of increased exposure, an industrywide answer to the question of just what constitutes Native American music and how it should be categorized at mainstream retail remains elusive. The majority of sales for the category still derive from such niche markets as powwow vendors, gift shops and direct sales.”Footnote ²⁶ By the early 2000s, record labels enjoyed increased sales of Native American content, but the industry struggled with where to put them in the retail space. In 2001, Lourdes Vitor of Paras Recordings told Billboard that “Many Native titles that are brought into most mainstream accounts are placed in the New Age bin … Our goal is to have Native American as its own separate section, adjacent to or within the World section.”Footnote ²⁷ Furthermore, Joanna Spindler of Silver Wave Records reported that:

Such confusion stemmed from what Olson reported as “retailers’ stone-etched mindset that all music from a Native American band must be traditional Native American music, despite the fact that there are a growing number of acts branching solidly into other genres.” She quotes Tom Bee, president of the Albuquerque-based SOAR Corp. record label, noting that “All people hear is that the artist is on SOAR, so they assume it is [traditional] Native American music, when it is really straight-ahead rock or hip-hop… . That music should be in the rock section, but we are having trouble getting stores to bring it in at all.”Footnote ²⁹ It was in this context that Nakai's career developed; in fact, it was his success, bolstered at least in part by his collaborations with DeMars, that catapulted contemporary Native American music into the recording industry's spotlight. His career reflects the complex social, economic, and cultural dynamics of Indigenous Peoples navigating the music industry and U.S. culture at large.

Nakai studied trumpet since the seventh grade and performed both classical and jazz styles during his time at Northern Arizona University. As Paula Conlon reports, “He had applied to the US Navy School of Music when a serious car accident left him with nerve damage in his facial muscles that precluded a future as a trumpet player.” He then turned to the Plains cedar wood flute, which is not a traditional instrument for the Navajo. He spent many years studying its background and performance practice with several traditional flutists, eventually developing his own style of playing and building his own instruments.Footnote ³⁰ The process resulted, among other things, in a manual, cowritten with DeMars and others, entitled The Art of the Native American Flute (1997).

Nakai initially traded for flutes at a powwow. In his own account, he would:

Like other artists working in traditional or folk musics, Nakai has had to carefully negotiate the boundaries of tradition, innovation, and commercial success. He has focused his career not only on raising the profile of the Native American flute, but also resisting the idea that it should exist only in “traditional” settings, while preserving certain traditional performance practices. Early in his career, he maintained a traditional style, as can be heard in his first recording, Changes (Canyon Records, 1983). Conlon sees this as “representative of Nakai's apprenticeship stage, when he stayed close to the traditional style advocated by Doc Tate Nevaquaya, with its imitation of bird calls linking the flute melody to its origins.”Footnote ³² Later, Nakai “asked Doc Tate's permission to ‘go his own way’ in the early 1980s. Doc Tate said it was alright since by that time Nakai, along with players such as Tom Machahty Ware and Doc Tate himself, had re-established the traditional Native American flute melodies.”Footnote ³³ Nakai explains: “That's all I'm doing today, going one more step beyond the tradition. However, I have always determined that I would never totally abandon tradition because when you do that you diminish the distinctiveness of the instrument itself.”Footnote ³⁴

Nakai's approach to Indigenous cultures—or indeed, to any culture—is inclusive. As Cartwright notes, he “sees himself as a member of a tribal people who stretch from Antarctica to the Arctic and beyond: a week after we met, Nakai headed to New Zealand to workshop with Maori musicians trying to relearn their lost ancestral instruments.”Footnote ³⁵ In the liner notes to the Two World Concerto, Nakai “expressed the desire that his work not be seen as a traditional ‘silver bracelet’ but a unique Artistic statement joining Native America, African, European and Asiatic cultures.”Footnote ³⁶ Indeed, many of his projects involve this inclusive approach. His college jazz group named Jackalope (a mythical beast, part antelope, part coyote) included Indigenous, European, and electric instruments, a variety of percussion, and electronic sequencers and techniques. Their first record, released in 1986, “defied classification. Nakai resisted the label ‘New Age’ and suggested the term ‘synthacousticpunkarachiNavajazz!’ Performances by Jackalope utilize improvisation, visual art, storytelling, dance and dramatic theatrical effects. Performers pop up in various parts of the theater.” Nakai continued this experimental world music fusion with the R. Carlos Nakai Quartet.Footnote ³⁷

Rather than approach Nakai's, DeMars's, or any other musics with reductive expectations or arguments of “authenticity,” “tradition,” or appropriation, it is perhaps more productive to understand these musics as cultural products in which these and other constructs interact and react. The nature of all music is to acquire layers of meaning, as contexts and audiences change and evolve. Hybrid musics in particular—that is to say, most postmodern musics—require an acknowledgment of the negotiation between the past and the present; between origins—however construed—and the agency of contemporary musicians and audiences.

Guadalupe and Its Indianisms

Although DeMars admits never to have listened to other Indianist art music, his use of Native American materials bears some striking similarities to the Indianist tradition, with some pointed differences. While composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries turned to published monographs for their sources, DeMars was provisioned with a Native American flute, which he taught himself to play. He also conducted his own research, by listening to the recordings of Native American music in the Canyon Records archives and making his own transcriptions. Regarding his powwow concerto Native Drumming (1996), he notes: “that required actually learning to sing the powwow songs and sing along with the guys, there really was no other way.”Footnote ³⁸

DeMars and Nakai found a balance of precomposed melodies, improvisation, and ornamentation to allow the Indigenous flutes to function in a Western art music context while preserving the instrument's traditional scales and performance practice. In a 1993 interview regarding the Two World Concerto, Nakai noted that “Jim was able to grasp the concept of the arbitrary system of tuning and performance technique, and then utilize that. This piece won't work for any other Native American flute in the world, except for the two we're using.”Footnote ³⁹ As Kathleen Joyce notes, DeMars actively seeks to avoid losing “the flute's improvisatory tradition” in the context of “absolute, precise rhythms like the European instruments… . To compensate for this potential dilemma, DeMars writes melodic lines for the flute that are more rubato in terms of rhythm and tempo.” He also “avoids writing unisons” to prevent intonation problems.Footnote ⁴⁰

The collaboration between DeMars, Nakai, and other Canyon Records artists, including Xavier Quijas Yxayotl, who provided Mexican Indigenous percussion and wind instruments for Guadalupe, places his works in contrast to previous Indianist music. Whereas in earlier Indianist works (like MacDowell's Indian Suite, for instance), the “Indian” was a useful symbol but was essentially absent from the work, in DeMars's works, Indigenous artists are present, have agency, and contribute to the representation of their cultures. At the same time, DeMars's use of Native American melodies and instruments continues the Indianist tradition of associating the Indigenous cultures of both countries with nature, spirituality, and authenticity. The composer subscribes to conventional (perhaps stereotypical) views of Indigenous cultures as something “primeval and good.” During an interview with DeMars, when I pointed out that Mexicans have been taught to value Indigenous cultures as unique and a key element making Mexican culture what it really is, he responded “and it does.”Footnote ⁴¹ He described his first hearing of the Native American flute as “a very fluid, life-like sound with biomorphic bends and curves; it had the sound of nature, blended with the sound of the wilderness.”Footnote ⁴² Such views emerge in Guadalupe. DeMars uses a combination of Mexican Indigenous instruments, generic exoticisms, and Native American (specifically Plains) musical features to represent both the Mexican Indigenous Peoples and the spiritual message of the opera.

As a powerful cultural symbol for Mexicans and Mexican Americans, the story of the apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe to the Indigenous Juan Diego during the sixteenth-century conquest of Mexico by Spain resonates with melodramatic possibilities. The opera largely follows the traditional story of Juan Diego's quest to fulfill Guadalupe's mandate that Bishop Zumárraga build a temple for her on the hill of Tepeyac. The Bishop rebuffs Juan Diego's request twice, demanding proof that Juan Diego has truly spoken with the Virgin. In the traditional story, the Virgin directs Juan Diego to collect in his tunic roses that have miraculously appeared in the middle of winter. When Juan Diego takes the roses to Zumárraga, a portrait of the Virgin is revealed under them in his tilma.Footnote ⁴³

DeMars admits that adding the Indigenous flutes to the piece served multiple purposes. From a practical perspective, Nakai's visibility and the marketing and financial resources available through Canyon Records would bring much to the project. On the other hand, Nakai's flutes also served a symbolic musical purpose: He treated the flute “as if it were Juan Diego, the idea of Juan Diego.”Footnote ⁴⁴

There are two primary musical uses of Indianism in the opera: The first and most important iteration is what I label the “spiritual” Indianist style, which centers on the Native American flute, and accompanies the apparitions of Guadalupe and Juan Diego's petitions to the bishop. In the Prologue, the opening conch shell call introduces an impressionistic soundscape of non-Western percussion and wind instruments, including ocean drum, rain stick, and wind whistle. The soundscape of wind, water, and seagulls serves as a backdrop for the Native American flute, concisely encapsulating the symbolic conjunction of nature, the spiritual realm, and the Indigenous; this symbolic soundscape recurs at different moments throughout the opera. The cedar flute (identified as Native American Flute in G in the score) introduces the three main themes that will appear later in the piece (Example 1). Following the tuning of the flute, the themes are pentatonic and feature the pitch cell D-F-D-C-Bb-G around which variation and ornamentation occur. The themes accompany all three apparitions of Guadalupe over open fifth drones, a harmonic stasis that serves as a backdrop for the cedar flute.

Example 1. James DeMars, Guadalupe, Our Lady of The Roses (2008), Prologue, mm. 1–30.

In Juan Diego's first aria, “Ah, mi alma,” we find him “wandering, in surprised euphoria” as he sings of the nature around him. At rehearsal 7, bird whistles, cedar flute, and rain stick represent the sounds of the environment surrounding him, but also recall the spiritual soundscape presented in the introduction. This precedes the first apparition of Guadalupe (Example 2).

Example 2. DeMars, Guadalupe, No. 2, “Ah, mi alma,” reh. 7., mm. 80–97.

At rehearsal 19, Guadalupe asks Juan Diego to relay to the bishop her request to build a temple for her at Tepeyac. Here the cedar flute presents a theme that will be used in a later scene: As Juan Diego makes his request to the bishop at Tlatelolco, the translator Malinche sings a variation on this theme (Examples 3 and 4).Footnote ⁴⁵

Example 3. DeMars, Guadalupe, No. 3, reh. 19, mm. 248–54.

Example 4. DeMars, Guadalupe, No. 8, mm. 515–521.

The return of the rain stick one measure before rehearsal 54 and of the cedar flute a few measures later recall the introduction; Malinche and the cedar flute have the “Thus she has spoken” theme first heard in m. 13 (see Example 1). The return of these themes indicates Juan Diego and Malinche's sincerity in their request to the bishop for a temple for Guadalupe (Example 5). In the fourth scene, as Juan Diego returns to Tlatelolco for a second time, the cedar flute will substitute for him by playing this same theme.

Example 5. DeMars, Guadalupe, No. 8, reh. 54, mm. 554–62.

The second use of Indianism in the opera is the “exotic” Indianist style, which centers on the use of what DeMars describes as the “powwow” style of singing in the chorus, representing the cultural clash between the Indigenous population and the Spanish conquistadores. This style is first introduced in the second scene, depicting the Indigenous People at Tlatelolco before Juan Diego addresses the bishop. The scene, which starts with the hand drums and an Indigenous double flute improvising, is full of generic exoticisms: trills, articulation, open fourths and fifths in the chorus and strings, and so on. These generic elements are nevertheless framed around the traditional Drum circle singing with which DeMars is familiar, with the use of vocables, falsetto in the male voices, and a repeated descending vocal line accompanied by an insistent percussion beat. At rehearsal 31, there is an indication in the score to vocalize in powwow style, and at rehearsal 36, the double flute is directed to have a powwow-style battle with the singer. At rehearsal 41, the chorus joins with vocables in Plains style (Examples 6 and 7).

Example 6. DeMars, Guadalupe, No. 6, mm. 351–66.

Example 7. DeMars, Guadalupe, No. 6, reh. 41, mm. 440–44.

After Juan Diego is dismissed, the bishop turns his attention to the evangelization of the Indigenous People. His interaction with the chorus at reh. 60 depicts the cultural gap between the conquistadores and the conquered: As the bishop attempts to teach them chant (the Easter sequence Victimae paschali laudes), the Indigenous People perform their resistance by adding elements of the Plains singing style. Here again DeMars uses the Plains “powwow” style for the chorus over a pedal point in the low strings (Examples 8 and 9). This style returns in two later scenes when the populace harasses Juan Diego, in scene 4 (No. 15, reh. 85) and at part II, scene 2 (No. 20, reh. 24). In No. 22, pounding drums and staccato piano chords at reh. 50 signal the final variation of the “powwow” theme in the chorus tenors, after the revelation of the roses, indicating the Indigenous People associate this supernatural event not only with the Christian mythology they have received from Zumárraga but also with their ancestral beliefs.

Example 8. DeMars, Guadalupe, No. 9., reh. 60, mm. 607–613.

Example 9. DeMars, Guadalupe, No. 22, reh. 50, mm. 493–498.

The use of the Plains powwow style as a semiotic marker of the Mexican Indigenous Peoples in Guadalupe strongly conveys their “Otherness” to a U.S. audience. At the same time, the representation of one Indigenous group with the music of a different group is problematic. Although it is true that not enough is known about pre-Hispanic Mexica (Aztec) music to use its characteristics in a modern opera, that hasn't stopped many composers from trying; Chávez himself did this in his Xochipilli-Macuilxóchitl (1940), appropriately subtitled “An Imagined Aztec Music.”Footnote ⁴⁶ That music, however “imagined,” would certainly be just as exotic to a mainstream U.S. audience as the Plains powwow singing. The composer's familiarity with Indigenous musical cultures of the Southwest is certainly a factor here, but the participation of Nakai was likely the main reason that DeMars includes Plains musical elements in the opera. The powwow style in the “exotic” Indianist sections offers an appropriate contrast to Nakai's flutes in the “spiritual” Indianist sections.

Beyond the practical considerations, I would argue that by representing Mexican Indigenous Peoples with U.S. Native American musical tropes, Guadalupe exemplifies the symbolic association of all Indigenous Peoples of North America in the U.S. imagination with nature and spirituality, an association that is not devoid of problematic essentialism. The sympathetic treatment of Indigenous American and Mexican cultures in Guadalupe nevertheless exists in tension with their exoticism and Otherness; in this, the opera is representative of U.S. cultural responses to Mexico stretching back throughout the long twentieth century. At the same time, the work's themes of cultural conflict, negotiation, and eventual reconciliation with the Other resonate with echoes of the modern binational relationship. Probably due to the genesis of the project, echoes of the immigration debate resonate in the piece, which the composer notes, “is not a religious statement.” He states that the message of the opera is that people must learn to try to understand the other side: “You have to learn to understand the people, figure out who they are, and you have to realize that they themselves, don't see themselves as evil.”Footnote ⁴⁷ The same message of cultural understanding underlies the work of Intercultural Journeys, a nonprofit musical organization to which both DeMars and Nakai belong, whose stated mission is to “boldly leverage the power of the performing arts to catalyze social change, challenge bias, and create spaces for dialogue and understanding by presenting culturally diverse voices that celebrate and affirm our shared humanity.”Footnote ⁴⁸

The story of the Virgin of Guadalupe illustrates one of the most crucial aspects of post-Conquest Mexican culture: the ability to absorb disparate cultural elements and blend them into a syncretic, yet coherent, whole. Similarly, since at least the 1980s, U.S. cultural identity has sometimes embraced and often struggled with its multiculturalism. While the Indianist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century failed to be accepted as an appropriate representation of U.S. musical nationalism, many of its features, as well as African American and other ethnic minority musics, were absorbed into the later nationalist style championed by Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Leonard Bernstein, and others. Works like DeMars's Guadalupe offer a contemporary reinterpretation of the various disparate elements of U.S. and Pan-American identity.Footnote ⁴⁹ Both the U.S. and Mexico are multi-ethnic, multicultural societies, as represented in these artistic works. Such works can symbolize the potential for collaboration and understanding, rather than conflict, in the future of the binational relationship.