In the village of Leweton on the tropical island of Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu, a community is rallying together to revitalise and share its cultural and environmental knowledge across generations. Its people come from the smaller, more remote northern islands of Merelava and Gaua, two of the 83 islands in the archipelago that comprises the Pacific nation of Vanuatu. Over time, these people relocated to Leweton, partly to access education, employment, healthcare and other services available on Espiritu Santo, but also as a result of the difficulties the rapidly changing climate presented to lives and livelihoods (Hayward 2014; Grant 2019).

Throughout Vanuatu, the climate crisis is wreaking environmental havoc. Cyclones in 2015 and 2020 were the two strongest ever recorded in the nation, each leaving a good proportion of the population in need of humanitarian assistance (United Nations Children's Fund 2016; World Vision 2020). Natural disasters like these are increasing in frequency and severity due to the climate crisis (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2021). They threaten traditional ways of life in Vanuatu and disrupt time-honoured cultural practices.

The Leweton community recognises, however, that the treasured cultural practices of their home islands are a way of both understanding and responding to changes in the climate. One such practice is 

, known in English as the Vanuatu Women’s Water Music. 

 is a sonically and visually striking performance tradition with deep interconnections to the natural world. Standing in a circle or semi-circle in waist-deep water, the women rhythmically slap the surface of the water using a variety of hand techniques that create a surprising diversity of sounds. These sounds reflect those in the natural local environment – the call of a particular species of bird; an oncoming cyclone; or waves over the reef at low tide (Dick 2014).

 performances often comprise a handful of “pieces” each lasting a minute or two, resulting in a diverse set of around five or ten minutes (though this depends on performance context and function). Typically, each piece features a distinct rhythm (or set of rhythms) accompanied by a simple chanted or intoned melodic phrase. Video 1 shows the women and girls of Leweton performing one such piece in the coastal shallows near their village; with their words, they call for rain, and (in the words) the rain comes.

 becomes a message passing through the air and water, simultaneously reflecting and shaping the space around it. For the Leweton community, 

 is an ‘acoustemology:’ a sonic way of knowing and interacting with the natural world, and a means to strengthen and celebrate the deep relationship between nature and culture (Feld 2012). In the words of cultural leader Sandy Sur:

The sound weaves through the ocean and the land, weaving our stories as it goes. Our stories are told through the water like a book [...] When the women are performing the Water Music, they’re telling us our story through nature. (Interview with Catherine Grant, November 2017)

 is a medium that allows the people of Leweton to collaboratively acknowledge, reflect on, and respond to the environmental and climate changes they are experiencing. Performer Cecelia Lolonun says,

The sounds of Water Music are still the same, but the meaning of Water Music is different now, because of climate change. Water gives us the sounds of things that are happening now [...] Climate change changes everything about nature and us. We have to keep on teaching traditional ways of looking after things. If we keep these ways strong, we can keep our nature alive. (Interview with Catherine Grant, November 2017)

 is also a way for Leweton villagers to share their cultural and environmental knowledge with tourists, and to educate them about the local impacts of environmental and climate change. From nearby Luganville port, a popular stop for cruise ships, tourists make the short trip to Leweton to participate in the activities of Leweton Cultural Village, an initiative Sandy Sur founded in the mid-2000s to support local livelihoods and “kastom” (traditional or heritage) cultural practices.

is the signature cultural practice that the villagers showcase for tourists.

In recent years, as the international profile of 

has grown, the women of Leweton have been invited to perform around the world (Dick 2014; Hayward 2014). In this way, 

 has enabled their participation in global climate discussions. The women proudly showcase their unique cultural practice as a way to generate wider awareness about the ramifications of climate change for Indigenous and island communities around the world (Grant 2019). In an era where calls for urgent climate action are often accused of being hyperbolic, 

 is a strikingly unique and powerful way to educate and rally for climate action.

The following film (Video 2) is an outcome of long-term and ongoing partnerships between three Brisbane-based Australian creative arts researchers – documentary filmmaker Ashley Burgess, director Maeve McKenna, and music researcher Catherine Grant – and the members of the Leweton community, including our primary contact and co-author Leweton cultural leader Sandy Sur. Catherine Grant had previously collaborated with Sandy and the women of Leweton on a project that explored the relationship of 

to issues of climate justice (2017-2018, reported in Grant 2019).

The film was recorded in 2019 during Ashley’s and Maeve’s trip to Leweton, during which they were leading an international study abroad tour for students at their university. Ashley and Maeve consulted with community members in advance about the topic and content of the film. Most of those they consulted considered 

to be a defining part of their village identity and an important part of their culture, and wanted to celebrate and share its deeper meaning.

All three of us Australian researchers (Ashley, Maeve, and Catherine) continue our collaboration with Sandy Sur and the people of Leweton at the time of writing (late 2022). According to Sandy, research, creative, and educational collaborations like these leverage the efforts of the Leweton community. They help the story of Leweton’s cultural and natural richness reach a wide international audience. They help people learn about how meaningful and important these interconnections are for the people of Leweton. They also help other people understand how deeply water, nature, and culture are interconnected, not only for Indigenous peoples in Vanuatu, but for everyone around the world.

Ashley Burgess and Maeve McKenna’s 2019 field trip to Leweton on which this film was made was funded by a grant of the Australian Government’s New Colombo Plan. Catherine Grant’s field trip in 2017 was funded by a research grant from Griffith University. The authors wish to thank all members of the Leweton community for sharing their unique cultural practices and knowledge with the wider world. 

The women performers who feature in this film are Denilla Frazer, Melinda Frazer, Jerolyn Frazer, Beverley Frazer, Cecilia Tingris, Cicilia Wari, Marie Sur, Sonrin Sur, Trisha Sur, and Margaret Tingris.

Apart from cyclones, what other challenges might the climate crisis be generating for the people of small-island communities like Leweton? What impacts might those challenges be having on water, reefs, land, food, tourism, health, housing, employment, cultural practices, and other aspects of life?

The video uses the phrase “Water is life.” What could this mean for the people of Leweton? What social and cultural functions of water does this idea suggest for the Leweton community?

is a gendered practice. From the video, what roles might 

play in the lives of women and girls of Leweton?

help the people of Leweton advocate for local, national, and international environmental or climate action? What are some of the possibilities of drawing on 

as a cultural resource in this way? What are some limitations? Are there any risks involved for the community?

Can you think of any other music genres, especially near where you live, that carry environmental knowledge, or that play a role in advocating for environmental care or action? What roles are they playing, and how?

The video represents a collaboration between people from the Leweton community and “outsider” researchers. What might have been some advantages and challenges of such a collaboration for the community? What about for the researchers? How might the challenges be overcome?

Dick, Thomas. 2014. “Vanuatu Water Music and the Mwerlap Diaspora: Music, Migration, Tradition, and Tourism.” 

AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples

Grant, Catherine. 2019. “Climate Justice and Cultural Sustainability: The Case of Etëtung (Vanuatu Women’s Water Music).” 

Hayward, P. 2014. “Sounding the Aquapelago: The Cultural-Environmental Context of Ni-Vanuatu Women's Liquid Percussion Performance.” 

Cole, Tim (director), Sur, Sandy (story), Wavales, Hilda (story), Leweton Cultural Group (performers). 2014. 

[film]. Port Vila: Further Arts. Available on Kanopy database.

 Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Hayward, Philip. 2014. “Sounding the Aquapelago: The Cultural-Environmental Context of ni-Vanuatu Women's Liquid Percussion Performance.” 

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2021. 

“AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis.”

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

“Cyclone Harold Leaves 160,000 Homeless: CAT II Disaster Declared.”

The women of Leweton have been performing Water Music for international audiences since the founding of the Leweton Cultural Village in 2008, and have been practising this tradition for as long as they remember.

Ol Woman Blong Wota (The Women of the Water)

Permanently valuable collections of records and the buildings and/or institutions that hold them. “Permanently valuable records” can include letters, reports, manuscripts, photographs, audio and video recordings, and digital-born materials.

Archival science points to archival origins in the 1789-1799 French Revolution. Prior to the Revolution, “archive” referred almost exclusively to documents providing legal or economic privileges to the state, church, nobility, or merchant class. In essence, European privileged classes created safe places for the documents that helped maintain their positions and privilege. The French Revolution began to alter this construction. In keeping with their slogan of “liberty, equality, and fraternity,” the revolutionaries redefined archives as a bulwark of citizens’ rights, ensuring that every citizen could access archival records to protect their rights and freedom (Jimerson 2009).

Archives have been many things to many people. Some have described them as temples, in which records of human activity achieve the semblance of authority and immortality. Referencing the security and protection typically present at an archive, others refer to them as prisons. Still others depict archives as restaurants, where those who are hungry for truth and knowledge seek metaphoric nourishment (Jimerson 2009). More accurately, they contain the very stuff that makes us who we are: evidence of our human life, ideas, truths, failures, and social memory (Kaplan 2000). At their best, archives can function as storehouses containing the tools for self-determination (Seeger 2004). Since materials in archives derive from our everyday lives, they provide us with important perspectives on our pasts/presents to help us decide what we want to do in our futures.

The history of sound and music being included in, or “accessioned” into, archives dates to the invention of sound recording equipment. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, a device that records sound by etching patterns formed by sound waves onto wax cylinders or discs. Soon after, in 1890, U.S. anthropologist Jesse Walter Fewkes (1850-1930) traveled to Maine to the Passamaquoddy Tribe to test this brand-new technology. Over the course of three days and using 35 wax cylinders, he recorded several tribal elders singing songs and speaking vocabulary, numbers, and important cultural narratives. These recordings are the first “field recordings” – recordings made outside of a recording studio – and are now stored at the American Folklife Center at the U.S. Library of Congress.

A few years later, the first sound archives were founded in Europe: the Phonogrammarchiv in the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna in 1899, and the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv in Berlin in 1900. Importantly, the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv was directed by Erich von Hornbostel (1877-1935), a pioneering scholar in the discipline now known as “ethnomusicology,” the study of music/sound as culturally meaningful phenomena. At its foundation, ethnomusicology is a discipline based on recordings, and the invention of sound recording technology and the founding of sound archives provided academics with the necessary tools and institutional support to create and develop this new scholarly discipline (Topp-Fargion 2008). Improvements to sound recording technology expanded the discipline. By the 1950s, portable, magnetic recording devices had largely replaced the cumbersome, delicate, and technically demanding phonograph. Suddenly, it was easier and cheaper for field researchers to make high quality recordings. They had soon traveled across the world, recording a vast array of diverse cultures, often placing their field recordings in archives located in Europe and the U.S. In addition to field recordings, sound archives today can contain commercial recordings, radio broadcasts, and materials connected to these recordings, such as personal papers, liner notes, field notes, letters, reports, and release forms.

Today, archivists ensure appropriate care for the collections housed in their repositories so that people can access them. They appraise and select materials of permanent value from donations, store and preserve them in a stable environment, and then arrange them and publish descriptions so that people can find and use them. Preservation typically presents many challenges. Perhaps surprisingly, the archival format with the greatest longevity is paper. However, today many archival materials are digital-born. Digital materials – which include an ever-increasing number of audio and video recordings – are very delicate and exist only as long as the media carrier – like a video tape – containing them. As media and computer hard drives age or break, the files they hold are lost. One solution is to back up materials in triplicate in different locations, which some archival cloud services offer as a standard feature. Nevertheless, digital archivists continue to work towards longer-term solutions to improve our abilities to preserve digital-born materials.

Once perceived as “neutral” caretakers of archives, archivists actually hold substantial power over the archive. And the archive as an institution can itself hold great power within its cultural context. Archival records have been used to define legitimacy, authenticity, and even prove or disprove people’s very existence. Some scholars suggest that events do not necessarily enter into the archive because they are pivotal, but rather that events become pivotal by virtue of being placed in an archive, thereby entering history (Taylor 2006). The archival function of appraisal, in which an archivist chooses some records as having “permanent value” and discards others, determines what people in the future will know about the past: whose voices will be maintained and whose will be silenced. In these regards, archivists co-create the archive (Cook 2011). In a very real sense, even the ways archivists define an “archival format” can be restrictive. In some Polynesian cultures, tattoos are archives (Wright 2009); and in some Caribbean cultures, Carnival performances are archives (Bastian 2009). Yet, body ornamentation and live performances are typically not considered archives by Euro-American archival science and are therefore excluded, disenfranchising these communities.

Repatriation – the return of cultural materials to the country or people who created them – continues to be a simultaneously vital and fraught discussion across cultural memory institutions, including archives. Europe- and U.S.-based ethnomusicologists conducting research in Africa, South and Central America, Australia, Asia, and elsewhere, typically placed their field research materials in archives in Europe and the U.S. It can be prohibitively expensive for source community members to access the holding institutions. For example, the prolific German field recordist Klaus Wachsmann (1907-1984) recorded over 1500 recordings between 1949 and 1957 in Uganda, eventually depositing them at the British Library Sound Archive in the U.K. The people featured in the recordings and their heirs were unable to access them until 2009, when Ugandan ethnomusicologist Sylvia Nannyonga-Tamusuza administered a project to facilitate digital repatriation of accessible copies of Wachsmann’s recordings to Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda’s capital (Nannyonga-Tamusuza and Weintraub 2012). But digital repatriation of copies is not the same thing as repatriating the originals – the repatriating archive does not cede control of the materials. As such, these archives retain control of the cultural heritage materials – and therefore of the cultures – represented in their collections.

Fueled by decolonization and reconciliation movements, some archivists are creating new ways for their repositories to relate with source communities, such as “shared stewardship,” championed by the U.S.-based Smithsonian Institution. This framework recognizes the rights of source communities to control their own cultural heritage. Archivists consult with community members to ensure culturally-appropriate care and description, and share authority, expertise, and responsibility with source communities (Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Culture Heritage 2019). Another toolkit that is increasingly used to promote culturally-appropriate and ethical archival practices, especially in Indigenous communities, is Mukurtu CMS. This free content management system facilitates the creation of community-specific databases and access protocols, for example, by controlling access by time of year, clan, family, age group, sex, etc., using locally meaningful definitions (Christen, Merrill and Wynne 2017).

In summary, archivists around the world work towards the goal of preserving historically meaningful materials – including music and sound – for future generations to access in ethical and meaningful ways. As they do so, they continue to wrestle with the outcomes of colonial and Empire-based histories that their institutions helped construct. Ensuring that the people represented in archives can access the material depicting them means that archives can continue to be useful storehouses of the tools of self-determination.

What sounds do you encounter on a regular basis, and how could you go about capturing them so that future generations might be able to hear them, too?

What memories and knowledge do you and your communities consider worth saving so that future generations might access them? What format (video, paper, etc.) do they take?

How might an archive be useful to the communities in which you are embedded?

Jimerson, Randall. “Introduction: Embracing the Power of Archives.” In 

Archives Power: Memory, Accountability, and Social Justice

, 1-23. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2009.

Nannyonga-Tamusuza, Sylvia, and Andrew Weintraub. “The Audible Future: Reimagining the Role of Sound Archives and Sound Repatriation in Uganda.” 

Review the websites and collections of these institutions, which are among some of the best-known sound archives in the world.

American Folklife Center, Library of Congress

Founded in 1976, the Center cares for an archive established in 1928. It is one of the largest ethnographic archives in the world, with millions of items of ethnographic and historical documentation recorded from the 19th century to the present.

This sound archive is attached to one of the largest and oldest ethnomusicology graduate programs in the world, and continues to play a vital role in the discipline.

Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution

Staff at the Ralph Rinzler Archives created the collaborative collections management framework “shared stewardship” in 2019. Soon after, this framework was adopted by all Smithsonian repositories. In addition to a variety of field recordings, this sound archive includes collections from the Smithsonian Folkways record label, including record labels acquired by Folkways over the years.

The first national public museum in the world, the British Museum was established in 1753. The Sound Archive features one of the largest collections of sound recordings in the world.

Makerere University Klaus Wachsmann Music Archive

An excellent example of digital return, or repatriation, this archive, founded in 2009, localizes Ugandan recordings made by Klaus Wachsmann in the mid-1900s in Uganda’s capital.

Bastian, Jeannette A. “‘Play mas’: carnival in the archives and the archives in carnival: records and community identity in the US Virgin Islands.” 

Christen, Kimberly, Alex Merrill, and Michael Wynne. “A Community of Relations: Mukurtu Hubs and Spokes.” 

Cook, Terry. “The Archive(s) Is a Foreign Country: Historians, Archivists, and the Changing Archival Landscape.”

Dempsey, Lorcan. “Scientific, Industrial, and Cultural Heritage: a Shared Approach.” 

22 (2000). http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue/22/dempsey/

 Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2009.

Kaplan, Elizabeth. “We Are What We Collect, We Collect What We Are: Archives and the Construction of Identity.”

Nannyonga-Tamusuza, Sylvia, and Andrew Weintraub. “The Audible Future: Reimagining the Role of Sound Archives and Sound Repatriation in Uganda.”

Seeger, Anthony. “New Technology Requires New Collaborations: Changing Ourselves to Better Shape the Future.”

Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Culture Heritage, Shared Stewardship of Collections (July 2019): https://folklife-media.si.edu/docs/folklife/Shared-Stewardship.pdf.

Taylor, Diana. “Performance and/As History.” 

Topp-Fargion, Janet. “Recordings in Context: The Place of Ethnomusicology Archives in the 21st Century.” 

Wright, Kirsten. “Recording ‘A Very Particular Custom’: Tattoos and the Archive.” 

This article provides an overview of critical issues regarding music in archives.

Music and Archives

accompanying annotated playlist available here

The concept that people, lands, and cultures are divided into nations that provide a central component of citizens’ identities.

Modern nationalism developed in Western Europe in the revolutionary atmosphere of the late eighteenth century. 

During this time, the nation-state became increasingly central to defining territories and the peoples who inhabited them.

 Nationalism seeks to homogenize and unite those within a territory, often antagonizing individuals within its borders who do not conform and are therefore considered a threat to a perceived national unity.

Nationalist movements in the 1800s sought to create musics to reflect the desired ideals of nations. This imperative emerged as European nations increasingly defined themselves in opposition to each other and the growing number of colonies. European nationalist composers often drew on melodic or rhythmic traits considered particularly indicative of national styles. Because music is a symbolic medium, the meaning of these rhythms and melodies was culturally established: Listeners and composers were themselves cultivated to hear certain traits as nationalist, developing these musical symbols of nationalism (Beckerman 1986:73). Many nationalist composers have drawn on collected folk culture and music from across territories and peoples subsumed into nations. These folk collections are presented as a shared national heritage or folk culture. In many cases, these projects claimed to “save” or “preserve” culture, often by notating versions of oral traditions in written forms, effectively freezing them into one single “official” version. Music books and media, such as radio, recordings and film, aided the dissemination of a shared national culture that sought to cultivate national identity as a dominant force in citizens’ lives (See Anderson 1983; Boyes 2010).

In formerly-colonized lands, nationalism reflects a complicated mixture of both liberation and the continuation of colonial power structures. With the advent of independence movements, lands that were previously colonized by European nations have sought to create their own national identities, including musical identities. In doing so, they have frequently drawn on the same model as European nations that push a homogenized cultural form as a shared national heritage. Following the European model of turning to “the folk,” or communities seen as preserving older strata of culture, many countries have appropriated these musics as sources of national music heritage. 

In countries like Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador, the music of Indigenous communities—many of whom remain wary of state governments because of histories of genocide—has been co-opted into indigenismo nation-building projects in the twentieth century.

 One famous example is “El Cóndor Pasa,” a piece from the eponymous zarzuela (operetta) composed in 1913 by Peruvian composer and ethnomusicologist Daniel Alomía Robles. Similar efforts have taken place in African countries where governmental organizations have played significant roles in shaping a shared national culture in the second half of the twentieth century when many African nations gained independence. In countries like Ghana, government organizations have supported performances with different ethnic groups representing cultures across its territories (Agawu 2003:19). These efforts face the challenges of representation: What music represents diverse nations of people, often speaking many different languages? Who gets to decide?

Settler colonial states—meaning the dominant population is descended from colonizers who have oppressed Indigenous communities through acts of genocide, systematic dispossession of lands, and cultural repression—have also used music to define themselves. These nation-states, including the United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa, may recognize some differences among groups of people when those differences do not challenge the nationalist rhetoric. Yet overall, they demand assimilation and depend on native societies losing their land, language, and cultural practices (Simpson 2014; Wolfe 2006).

Political and social figures have showcased—and in many cases, misrepresented—musical styles and dances that they feel should be celebrated as “roots” music representing their idea of a nation. For example, Appalachian old-time and country music in the United States has been overwhelmingly portrayed as Anglo- and Euro-American music; the African and Black roots of these musical styles were intentionally down-played and erased in part through the efforts of wealthy, Anglo-Americans such as Henry Ford (See Brucher 2016).

So how do communities and musicians respond to nations and ideas of national musics when these same musicians often find themselves systematically excluded? In some cases, people push for inclusion and recognition, finding spaces for marginalized identities to be viewed and heard as part of a national heritage. This approach might be observed when the lyrics of a national anthem includes several languages; for instance, South Africa changed their national anthem following apartheid to better reflect the inclusive ideals of a new era (see example below). Research and scholarship have also played an important role in amending histories that have marginalized communities (See Hay 2003; Flemons 2018; Our Native Daughters 2019). Another example is mariachi music, which has been embraced as a representative of Mexican and Latin American cultures in the United States and public-school music curricula. At the same time, it can also be understood as a vital U.S. American music given its significance within the United States today (See Salazar 2011; Sheehy 2006).

In other cases, various racial, ethnic, and economic social groups within a nation may disagree, redefine, or create their own definitions of what their national music is (Wong 2012). And whereas it may be assumed that membership within a nation is or should be an end goal for those who are marginalized and seeking the benefits of citizenship, there are contexts in which rejecting membership of one nation may be preferred in order to advocate for the sovereignty of another identity group. Music, along with other culturally-identifying practices such as language and dance, have often been central for people resisting or rejecting a nationalist identity during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, such as the second Hawai'ian Renaissance Movement's protest songs and renewed interests in Hawai'ian language, chant and dance (Lewis 1987; Stillman 1995:4-5).

In summary, although nationalism in its current form is a relatively recent phenomenon that began among colonial European nations, today it structures assumptions of how humans organize themselves, cultures, and musics. While music may create affinity within nations, musical nationalism does so by excluding others—often by erasing communities and practices all together.

In the passage above, it is mentioned that folklore projects “claimed to ‘save’ or ‘preserve’ culture, often by documenting or freezing versions of oral traditions in written forms.” In many cases, however, there are multiple versions of songs, meaning that decisions must be made about which versions to preserve or make “official” by publishing. What problems might arise in this process? Who should get to make these decisions about which songs join folk music canons and which ones are left out? What might be some consequences of these choices?

Are people able to claim an identity or membership within a nation or political grouping even if they are not recognized as a member from the nation or political grouping? Why or why not? What are some of the identity issues that arise when one's claims to membership may or may not be recognized by a larger group? How might these discrepancies impact musical performance?

Make a list of rights or benefits that are awarded to someone who is able to claim citizenship to a nation state. Then consider what is at stake for someone who is denied citizenship to a nation state.

Conduct an internet search using Google or a database like JSTOR to read about plurinationalism. Find an example of how this is practiced in a given nation state or country. What are some of the social challenges of this political structure? How does music relate to the ways this plurinational state is represented?

 2003. Special issue on Affrilachian music 23(1). 

Focus: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe: Music, Nationalism, and the Making of the New Europe

Einarsdóttir, Áslaug, and Valdimar Hafstein. 2018. 

The Flight of the Condor: A Letter, a Song and the Story of Intangible Cultural Heritage

Governing Sound: The Cultural Politics of Trinidad’s Carnival Musics

. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Tang, Kai. 2021. “Singing a Chinese Nation: Heritage Preservation, the Yushengtai Movement, and New Trends in Chinese Folk Music in the Twenty-First Century. 

Taruskin, Richard. 2001. “Nationalism.” 

Alomía Robles, Daniel. 1913. Orchestral recording based on the original scores: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvp-RFpgXA0

 Washington, DC: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW40224. 

https://folkways.si.edu/dom-flemons/black-cowboys

https://folkways.si.edu/kaulaheaonamiku-kiona/hawaiian-chant-hula-and-music/hawaii/music/album/smithsonian

Mariachi Los Gavilanes de Monaco Middle School – Heart of Las Vegas Television Documentary video: 

Pop-Up Magazine. 2020. "Going Varsity in Mariachi." Documentary video: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXywZ2CXcnk

 Washington, DC: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW40232. 

https://folkways.si.edu/songs-of-our-native-daughters

Musics of Hawai'i: Anthology of Hawaiian Music - Special Festival Edition

. Washington DC: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW40016. 

https://folkways.si.edu/musics-of-hawaii-anthology-of-hawaiian-music-special-festival-edition/album/smithsonian

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions

Beckerman, Michael. 1986. “In Search of Czechness.” 

The Imagined Village: Culture, Ideology and the English Folk Revival.

Brucher, Katherine. 2016. "Assembly Lines and Contra Dance Lines: The Ford Motor Company Music Department and Leisure Reform." 

Journal of the Society for American Music

Hay, Fred J. 2003. "Black Musicians in Appalachia: An Introduction to Affrilachian Music." 

Lewis, George H. 1987. "Style in Revolt Music, Social Protest, and the Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance." 

Salazar, Lauryn C. 2011. "From Fiesta to Festival: Mariachi Music in California and the Southwestern United States." Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.

Mariachi Music in America: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture

Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States.

Stillman, Amy Ku'uleialoha. 1995. "Not All Hula Songs Are Created Equal: Reading the Historical Nature of Repertoire in Polynesia." 

Wolfe, Patrick. 2006. "Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native." 

Whose National Music?: Identity, Mestizaje, and Migration in Ecuador

This article offers an overview of musical nationalism. It considers how states have used music as a political tool as well as the ways in which communities have employed music to reject national identities and challenge nation-states.

Music and Nationalism

This is an annotated playlist on the topic of music and nationalism. It can be used to 

accompany the World Music Textbook article “Music and Nationalism.”

 These pieces are available through most standard music services, but they are compiled in a Spotify playlist for convenience 

Eight Slavonic Dances Op. 46: No. 1 in C (Presto) by Antonín Dvořák

This dance by Dvořák is in the style of folk music. Despite the folkness it invokes, however, Dvořák composed the melodies himself. This example is in the form of a dance known as a furiant, which is a fast triple-meter dance commonly found in Eastern Europe (Anderson 1988; Tyrrell 2001).

 draws on musical themes from Indigenous communities in Mexico and employs Indigenous Mesoamerican percussion instruments. Written in the mid-1930s, the piece uses European nationalist strategies of integrating folk music, though Chávez was culturally distant from the Indigenous communities whose melodies he borrowed. This compositional strategy reflects Mexican models of 

 that co-opted Indigenous culture for nation-building projects.

“Pasacalle” by Daniel Alomías Robles

In 1913, Peruvian composer Daniel Alomías Robles composed music for the zarzuela (a form of Spanish musical theater) 

. In the vein of other Peruvian works of music and theater at the time, the piece seized on a nationalist style that employed indigenismo and ideals of mestizaje, or cultural mixing. The “Pasacalle” from this zarzuela became popularized as the song “El Cóndor Pasa.” While Robles was not Indigenous, his piece quickly became a prominent symbol of Peruvian Indigeneity and nationalism. Yet the song has also been contested as some have claimed the melody originated from Indigenous songs that were also popular in neighboring Bolivia (Mejía 2014; ​​Einarsdóttir and Hafsdein 2018). The song reflects the complexities of cultures not fitting neatly with national boundaries and legacies of states appropriating musical forms for nationalist projects.

“Explorations: Hi-Life Structures” by The Pan African Orchestra

Although based in Ghana, the Pan African Orchestra performs on instruments from across Africa. Kofi Agawu points out that the music performed by the Pan African Orchestra often strikes listeners as traditional even though the pieces they perform are recently composed (2003:19). This misperception speaks to some of the challenges that emerge in thinking about what constitutes “tradition.”

“Oh! Susanna” performed by the 2nd South Carolina String Band

Among the many U.S. songs composed by Stephen Foster, “Oh! Susanna” was popularized in minstrel shows across the United States in the mid-nineteenth century (Root 2013). This version is performed by the 2nd South Carolina String Band, a group of Civil War reenactors who perform popular songs from the Civil War era. In the 1920s, automobile tycoon Henry Ford invested in preserving the composer's home and promoting Foster’s songs alongside those of other composers that he deemed representative of the country’s Anglo musical heritage. A nazi sympathizer, he sought to distribute and promote music from the countryside that he saw as culturally and morally superior to other popular musics (Warnock 2009). The history of this song and others rooted in minstrel shows have come under renewed scrutiny in places like music classrooms, where national ideals of inclusivity increasingly confront racist music histories.

“Home on the Range” performed by Dom Flemons

Sitting around the campfire, the American Western movie 

 (1946), features actor Ken Curtis crooning the song “Home on the Range.” Among the songs most associated with cowboy culture, the song invokes the emblem of today’s quintessential American cowboy—a figure who is nearly always depicted as white. Despite this popular portrayal cemented through U.S. popular media there were many Black, Mexican, and Native American cowboys. The song “Home on the Range” was recorded by American song collector Alan Lomax from an unnamed Black musician in Texas (Lomax 1945). This song is among the Black cowboy and folk songs that have been subsumed into U.S. national music while erasing its Black roots (Flemons 2018).

“Polly Ann’s Hammer” by Our Native Daughters

“Polly Ann's Hammer” was written by Amythyst Kiah and Allison Russell for Our Native Daughters’ 2019 release on Smithsonian Folkways. Whereas some tracks on this album are covers or reinterpretations and revivals of Black songs transcribed as early as the 1700s, members of Our Native Daughters have composed original songs like “Polly Ann’s Hammer” to honor and commemorate historical Black figures in the United States who have often been overlooked. In the case of this track, Kiah and Russell wrote about the strength of Polly Ann Henry who, prior to 2019, had only been referenced in some verses of songs about her husband, John Henry (Nelson 2006).

“El Relámpago” by Mariachi Herencia de México

Mariachi Herencia de México is a Latin GRAMMY-nominated community ensemble composed of students from the Chicago area. They are an outstanding example of how schools and community youth ensembles across the United States have invested in creating high-profile student programs that focus on Mexican music. “El Relámpago” was released on their debut album. This track is an arrangement of a standard mariachi song representative of the genre of traditional sones (polymetric and polyrhythmic songs) common in Central and Western Mexico.

“He Aloha Nō 'O Honolulu” composed by Lot Kauwe and performed by The Kahauana Lake Trio

Lot Kauwe was a well-known singer, songwriter, and teacher who wrote songs in the Hawai’ian language during the early 1900s. His song “He Aloha Nō 'O Honolulu” uses metaphors, double-meanings, and Hawai'ian poetic conventions to sing about love and the Hawai’ian islands (Huapala 1997; Honolulu Advertiser 1922:7). Kahauanu Lake or “Uncle K” was a Hawai’ian scholar, historian, composer, and musician celebrated for his left-handed ukulele playing. He formed the Kahauana Lake Trio with bassist Tommy Lake (his brother) and guitarist Al Machida. Kahauana Lake’s music was influential in creating a contemporary Hawai’ian style. During the second Hawai’ian Renaissance Movement in the 1960s and 1970s, Lake, his bandmates, and Ma’iki Aiu Lake—an eminent hula dancer, teacher and his wife—inspired a new generation of Hawai'ian hula dancers and musicians who resisted colonialism and American imperialism by promoting traditional Hawai’ian music and dance as well as singing contemporary music in the Hawai’ian language (Hula Records 2013; Stillman 1982:49-50).

Sanjuanitos: Carabuela/por el Valle Voy/Pobre Corazón/Carnaval de Guaranda performed by Roberto Zumba

Roberto Zumba is regarded as one of Ecuador’s founding singers of a popular music style known as 

 (Wong 2012). Over the course of his career, Zumba and his contemporaries shifted their singing styles to reflect discourses about Ecuador’s national music. Through music, they participated in national conversations about racial identity, ethnicity, social class, and differing generational perspectives on what it meant to be Ecuadorian. Zumba’s medley of sanjuanito songs draws on Andean Indigenous musical styles and are performed in the música chicha style featuring synthesizers and electronic drum tracks. Working-class Ecuadorians began to embrace this music as a national music style after the 1980s, but middle- and upper-classes also celebrate some sanjuanito songs, such as “Pobre Corazón,” as a national symbol (heard between 5:05 until 6:32 in this recording).

Borodin was among a cohort of Russian composers, known as The Mighty Five, who sought to create what they perceived as a truly “Russian” sound in the late nineteenth century. Borodin sought to paint a sonic landscape, connecting music to geography—in this case Central Asian territories that Russia had recently seized in a climate of European imperialism. The piece draws on musical exoticism, or the portraying other peoples and places distant from the composer (Locke 2001).

The Tuareg residing in northwestern Africa are an ethnic group with a shared language and culture, but who do not currently have their own nation-state. Music provides a means for creating a sense of nationhood for Tuareg communities residing across different nation-states in northwestern Africa. The electric guitar has become a particularly symbolic instrument among the Tuareg since the 1990s (Backer 2015; Schmidt 2018).

This Chinese orchestra piece from 1958 draws on folk music themes and presents them in an orchestrated format. The modern Chinese orchestra (MCO) style integrates a range of traditional Chinese instruments that have historically been played in ensembles like the Silk and Bamboo ensembles (sizhu) of tea houses. The MCO took its current form in the 1950s as an extension of government efforts to promote a shared Chinese national heritage and the prevailing ideas of modernization (Kuo-Huang and Gray 1979:17).

“The First House in Connaught/The Copper Plate Reel” by Séamus Ennis

This reel—a traditional Irish dance form in a quick duple meter—is among those collected and performed by Séamus Ennis. Ennis collected thousands of Irish tunes and he performed on the uilleann pipe that is featured in this example. Ennis gathered music from across Ireland for the Irish Folklore Commission that, as was the case in many national projects, saw its role as collecting and preserving Irish traditional music (Carolan 2001; National Folklore Collection 2022).

Our thanks to Yuxin Mei and Eric Schmidt for their contributions to this annotated listening guide.

 [CD] Unterhaching-München: Naxos 8.550143.

https://africasacountry.com/2015/03/the-unexpected-popularity-of-dire-straits-in-north-african-tuareg-communities

Carolan, Nicholas. 2001. “Ennis, Seamus.” In 

​​Einarsdóttir, Áslaug, and Valdimar Hafstein. 2018. The Flight of the Condor: A Letter, a Song and the Story of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Film. 

 [CD]. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Folkways Recording SFW CD 40224. 

Honolulu Advertiser, The. 1922. “Lot Kauwe Dies; Was Noted Singer.” In 

, 7, July 16. Accessed February 14, 2022. 

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/27904443/1922-lot-kauwe-obituary

 1997. “He Aloha Nō ʻO Honolulu (Goodbye to Honolulu).” Accessed February 14, 2022. 

http://www.huapala.org/Hea/Healoha\_No\_Honolulu.html.

Hula Records. 2013. “Hawaiian Icon, Musician Kahauanu Lake Dies.” Accessed February 14, 2022 

http://hularecords.com/\_clientData/\_ao\_Ecom/obit2.html

Kuo-Huang, Han, and Judith Gray. 1979. “The Modern Chinese Orchestra.” 

Lomax, John A. 1945. “Half-Million Dollar Song: Origin of ‘Home on the Range.’” 

Mejía, Luis Salazar. 2014. “El Cóndor Pasa... y Sus Misterios.” 

Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana

National Folklore Collection. 2022. “About.” Accessed February 2, 2022. 

Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend

Root, Deane L. 2013. “Foster, Stephen C(ollins).” In 

Schmidt, Eric. 2018. “Rhythms of Value: Tuareg Music and Capitalist Reckonings in Niger.” PhD dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.

Stillman, Amy Ku’uleialoha. 1982. “The Hula Ku’i: A Tradition in Hawaiian Music and Dance.” M.A. thesis, University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

This is an annotated playlist on the topic of music and nationalism. It can be used to accompany the World Music Textbook article "Music and Nationalism."

Music and Nationalism: Annotated Playlist

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Recently published chapters

Ol Woman Blong Wota (The Women of the Water)

Music and Archives

Music and Nationalism

Music and Nationalism: Annotated Playlist

News and Updates

Increased Honorarium Funding Available

Website redesign

Summer 2022 Update

Music notes: Overviews for the classroom

World Music
Textbook