Message from Clare Scott to the choir and board concerning Nukapianguaq and cultural sensitivity/ethics/attribution

Thank you so much for these links and your words, Scott! I’m so glad to be in a group that’s willing to engage thoughtfully with the challenging balance between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation, and to take the time to do it right. 

Full disclosure to others - I’ve been troubled by this piece and brought some questions up to Scott and the Board in our first week rehearsing together. My larger question was mostly because I’m so new to Ancora and don’t have the institutional knowledge. I asked: has Ancora has ever had any conversations about what it means for us to be a majority-white choir when we sing music outside of our cultures? How do we make sure we do it well? I know we want to do things right, and not do harm, and to be respectful, and I'm sure this isn't the first time the choir has thought through this. It was really awesome when the Board and Scott were like, yes, that is super important, let’s make sure we take time to have that conversation as we move forward. 

Most of our pieces that are in other languages or from other musical traditions are by composers or arrangers writing from within their home cultures.Obviously we don’t want to limit ourselves to only pieces by composers or arrangers from our own backgrounds! I really appreciated these tips from Philadelphia choral director and educator Rollo Dilworth for differentiating between “culture stealing” and “culture sharing”, for example. 

I was uncomfortable with Nukapianguaq because it’s a piece based on Inuit chants arranged by a white composer and shared with questionable permission (the singer shared it with an anthropologist 60+ years ago). There’s a group that works with UNESCO called the International Council for Traditional Music and Dance, and Anthony Seeger, an ethnomusicologist there, has an interesting article on why it’s so important to intentionally credit traditional musicians rather than (intentionally or not) stealing or profiting off their art and music. That seems to be the main theme that runs through all the best practices in performing traditional music, especially First Nations music. For example, here’s a short article from the Canadian National Association for Music Education, for example, that lays out some clear instructions for showing cultural respect when singing First Nations music in particular. (Here’s the denser academic journal article it summarizes.) 

Even though that specific reminder to credit individuals/families and get explicit permission for performance of First Nations traditional music was aimed at music educators, this seemed pretty relevant… especially since in 2019, Inuit musicians called out the prestigious vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth for adapting traditional Inuit throat singing, katajjaq, in a culturally appropriative way without attribution or permission. The group apologized and explained that their intent was to appreciate rather than appropriate, but also recognized that they themselves “aren’t the arbiters of that distinction.”

(https://nunatsiaq.com/stories/article/acclaimed-american-choir-slammed-for-use-of-inuit-throat-singing/ and https://seismograf.org/en/artikel/song-ones-own)

Scott made the great point that one way we can mediate harm is to share information in our liner notes / the info we share with the audience when we perform… and it makes sense that of course we’d have that conversation as a choir too, not just stick it in the notes! Since I’m such a librarian it hurts sometimes, and I was super curious, I did some research on this piece in particular. Here’s some of what I learned! 

Nukapianguaq was arranged by white Canadian choral high school choir teacher and composer Stephen Hatfield in 1991, at the height of the “multicultural music” moment in which white composers freely shared and adapted music from around the world, hoping to create a sense of global togetherness or at least to increase Western appreciation of global music. (Hatfield did this a lot -- the dissertation Scott shared called his approach to world music mashups the “Hatfield Hybrid,” and Hatfield was quoted in there as calling world chants “God’s macrame,” which made me laugh.) 

The first chant in there that kind of gets the whole thing started was recorded by French anthropologist/scientist Jean Malaurie in 1967. Hatfield specifically says in the front matter that he used the Malaurie recordings when composing this piece. That collection of recordings by Malaurie (Chants et tambours Inuits de Thulé au Détroit de Bering) is a significant cultural artifact. and still available for us to listen to. 

Malaurie was traveling with a group of Thule people through northern Canada, Greenland, and Alaska; by all accounts, he built real friendships with the Inuit and Thule people he traveled with. Nukapianguaq was a hunter from Etah in Northern Greenland, who with his son Sakaeunnguaq and their wives supplied the Canadian Mounties laying claim to Ellesmere Island with food and supplies from 1928-1930. In 1950-51, Sakaeunnguaq was Malaurie’s guide. (Malaurie wrote several books about this, including Ultima Thule: Explorers and Natives in the Polar North.) 

Sakaeunnguaq shared the song that starts our piece with Malaurie either during that trek in 1950 or later. He called it his father’s song (“Chant de son pere”) - and you can actually hear a recording of him singing it in 1967 here at 14:36: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fd7xQVRiPg. 

And luckily for us, whether it’s because of his professional respect or friendship, one thing that Malaurie was really good at was crediting the individual people who shared their music and culture… which is why we know Sakaeunnguaq's name and that this was his father Nukapianguaq’s song. 

So we know who shared the song -- Sakaeunnguaq -- and we know that he shared it with Malaurie and presumably gave his permission to record and share it. Does that translate to the Hatfield hybrid that we’ve got on paper for this concert? Maybe? Maybe not? Either way it seems important to bring into our conversation going forward. 

And that’s what I’ve got! (That and now a whole lot of information in my brain about Inuit musical traditions that I didn’t share, which is probably a relief for everybody who’s read this far!). Though PS, a fascinating unrelated fact is that while Malaurie was traveling with his Thule friend Kutikitsoq through Greenland, they accidentally discovered a secret US military base that was not supposed to be there, and it turned into a whole wild story. 

Phew! Thanks to all of you for being on this musical and learning journey - really looking forward to singing tomorrow! 

Warmly, 

Claire (Scott)