Navajo Blessingway Singer [antikvár]

Foreword Two ethnomusicologist-anthropologists, Charlotte J. Frisbie and David P. McAllester, have truly accomplished a labor of love in editing the life story of Blessingway singer Frank Mitchell, a man known to his people as Olta'i Tsoh, or Big Schoolboy. The labor involved many hours of interviews, both directed and nondirected, supplemented by countless hours of ethnohistorical research and many miles of travel, in order to clarify the chronology of Frank Mitchell's life and times. The love was centered on a grand old man who was a true patriarch of his tribe, on his people and their culture, and on their harsh but singularly beautiful homeland. Most of the archival-library research was done by Frisbie, who searched through great masses of minutes of Navajo council meetings and numerous other files and records for confirmation of dates and the like. The results of her research are summarized in the chapter notes and four appendixes. Appendix B presents a particularly useful chronology of events from 1856 to 1972, embodying not only items pertaining to Frank Mitchell's ancestry and life history but much additional information concerning the Navajo tribe and country. The editors continued to work rechecking data with members of the Mitchell family and with other Navajos for eight years following Frank's death. Then came the tremendous task of selecting and correlating data, arranging the materials chronologically, equalizing the English style of the several interpreters employed, and attempting to make the final version conform as closely as possible to Frank Mitchell's style of narration in his own language. The Blessingway rites according to the Navajos themselves constitute the backbone of their religion, controlling all the other ceremonials. The Navajos also give the Blessingway historical precedence, placing its origin just after the Emergence. This set of rites is the only one in the vast complex of Navajo song ceremonials which is preventive or prophylactic in purpose rather than curative. In spite of their central position in Navajo life and ceremonialism, these relatively brief and simple rites have been shamefully [ ix ]