Various: Songs From The Iroquois Longhouse

1956 Library Of Congress Division Of Music Recording Laboratory AFS L6

A bit of an odd one, this. Back in the 1980s I realised a dream when I was accepted at University as a mature student after six years out at work, despite having flunked ’O’ Levels and not even sat ‘A’ Levels, due to a natural indolence and preoccupation with popular music and films. Another preoccupation I’d had since childhood was that with Native Americans. I’d always been fascinated by Westerns and their colourful but grossly inaccurate portrayal of ‘Indians’, of which I only became aware much later, but my interest was catapulted into hyperspace after reading Dee Brown’s fabulous but tragic 1971 chronicle Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee. Despite some poor scholarship, Brown dragged the unacceptable truth about US treatment of its indigenous population out of the limited realm of dusty archives and conventional academia and into the glare of the popular mainstream public arena. The book has never been out of print and it’s one of my many bibles. I've bought numerous replacement copies over the years and revisit it often.

The University's American Studies course, while covering all aspects of US history, literature and culture, allowed me to research and write about Native Americans for pretty much every assignment, provided I chose my theme judiciously. Nevertheless, when it came to my first piece of assessed work to be done over the Christmas break I was at something of a loss over what to do, due to the gargantuan scale of the subject matter. It was then that my North American History tutor, Bancroft-Prize winner Dr Edward Countryman (now Professor), came to the rescue and pointed me in the direction of anthropologist Anthony FC Wallace’s The Death And Rebirth Of The Seneca. Here Wallace tells the fascinating story of how the 18th-century Seneca prophet Handsome Lake rejuvenated the Iroquois religion after a long period of post-colonial cultural disintegration and alcoholism. I won’t trot out the whole tale, but friends and colleagues will not be surprised to learn that I became totally obsessed by the whole project, and when I came across this collection of Library of Congress field recordings carried out by another esteemed academic, William N Fenton, while rummaging in a local record store close to the college campus, I grabbed it.

Now, this isn’t the kind of music you’d play often or for any length of time, but the quality ain’t bad considering these are mono field recordings made in 1941, and they give a brilliant insight into aspects of traditional Iroquois culture and belief on New York state’s Allegany Reservation (which I visited many years later) and also the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, Canada. Some listeners may be intrigued by how different the singing is from the stereotyped chants heard in old Westerns, also by some of the spoken question-and-answer interjections, and the use of turtle, horn and gourd rattles and water drums. The record is accompanied by a 42-page booklet including historic information (such as attempts to chronicle Iroquois music as far back as 1623) and geographic descriptions of the reservations in question, as well as photographs of many of the False Face singers both during ceremonies and taking breaks in between. Principal among these were New York’s Seneca singer Chancey Johnny John (known by the Coldspring Longhouse People as hau’no’on, or ‘Cold Voice’) and Simeon Gibson, a Cayuga from Six Nations.

To conclude, I haven’t played this record for years and may never again – although having unearthed it now, I might give it a spin later today before sliding it back into its dog-eared home – but it's such a precious jewel to me, both as a record collector and a student of Native Americans of the Northeastern Woodlands/Great Lakes area (yes, still, 40 years after graduating) that I can’t even begin to contemplate parting with it.

Deh-jee-nya-cha’she’ay (‘We shall meet again’) - I hope…