Music in the Westward Expansion: Songs of Heart and Place on the American Frontier by Laura Dean (review)

Erratum

Laura Dean’s roots in the American West and her passion as a music educator are both evident in her recent publication Music in the Westward Expansion: Songs of Heart and Place on the American Frontier. Written in accessible and vibrant language with fellow educators and history enthusiasts in mind, Dean’s semi-chronological account of the music west of the Mississippi River addresses some of the popular archetypes and narratives of the American frontier from a musical standpoint: Native Americans, cowboys, Oregon Trail emigrants, adventurers, missionaries, and immigrant settlers. As Dean notes, her book is not an exhaustive encyclopedia—only some musical cultures are represented. Rather, it should be approached as a broad collection of case studies, particularly useful as a companion piece for those studying/teaching the Corps of Discovery or the Oregon Trail. The author’s descriptive tone paints detailed portraits of select communities, drawing on a combination of historical, primary sources (journals, newspapers, and recordings), secondary sources (such as John Lomax’s research), and personal interviews.

Dean’s book can be divided into three parts: music pre-Oregon Trail, music during the Oregon Trail migrations, and music inspired by and created in the settled West. Chapter 1 speaks to Native American music, more specifically the flute songs of the Northern Cheyenne. This chapter is somewhat unique because it is primarily the product of a collaboration with a single musician, the late American master flutist Jay Old Mouse. Through the narration of Jay, the reader will learn about the tradition of making and using a flute as a deeply personal instrument of comfort, romance, and communal enrichment. The author also details several legends from the Great Plains nations about the evolution of music itself and the curious ubiquitousness of the flute. Chapters 2 through 4 present the stories of famous early Euro-American explorers such as the Corps of Discovery, the Whitmans, and the Pike Expedition, as musically-punctuated journeys. Dean details what kinds of instruments and music these explorers made for themselves, as well as music encountered on the way—Sioux dances, acculturated Mexican-African-Indigenous styles, and French-Canadian songs. Chapters 5 and 6 are dedicated to the Oregon Trail, with an introductory chapter about the Oregon Trail’s context and its emigrants, followed by collected accounts of musical events narrated by the pioneers. In the final three chapters, Dean turns to the settlers of the West and the later influences of these cultures on academic interests. Readers can expect to learn about reform school bands, miners’ ensembles, cowboy stag dances, and the acculturated music of Walla Walla, Washington; Portland, Oregon; and Butte, Montana. The author concludes by explaining how Western life and acculturated forms of music contributed to the works of ethnomusicologists, fine art composers, and popular songwriters. In addition to well-known academic figures like Francis Denmore and Aaron Copland, readers may be excited to learn about Native American musicians who toured nineteenth-century America and collaborated with opera composers. In her epilogue, the author addresses the reader directly to encourage them to use music in their own lives to establish “a new sense of place” (p.167), while coping with contemporary life and its challenges. Reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic, she suggests that America’s musical history can be inspirational and instructive for the current population.

It should be noted that the tone of this book is markedly descriptive as opposed to overtly critical when it comes to the complex political history of the United States. Readers will not find any critical discussions regarding the intersection of music and socio-political/colonial theory—although Dean does acknowledge the injustices imposed through power dynamics when relevant. The author makes clear that her mission is to depict the centrality of music in the communal life of the diverse individuals who inhabited the West, rather than to examine their socio-political implications, when she states...