Essential Song: Three Decades of Northern Cree Music

Introduction

[ Introduction As the title Essential Song suggests, in this book I strive to show the fundamental place of song in subarctic hunting life. The northern Cree exemplify the human need for song, which I define here as an oral expression carried primarily in the singer’s mind. Such songs are often learned from an ancestor and are an organic part of the singer’s environment. As you will read, the Cree, throughout a time of enormous social change, maintained song as an oral, local, and spiritual tradition. This book records observations, over thirty years (1970–2000), of subarctic Cree song in the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Quebec. The context and function of songs and song-making are emphasized as much as the music, in emulation of the Cree approach to song. The text accompanies some of my audio recordings of hunting songs sung by six Cree men in the early 1980s.1 Apart from the analysis of the hunting songs, I include a history of Cree oral forms and some discussion of recent transformations of Cree music. The hunting songs you hear on the accompanying recording grew out of the sounds of the subarctic. For all but two or three months of the year, the air temperature is below freezing. The fragrant spruce forests and animals are silent under a blanket of snow, broken only by the occasional raucous call of a raven. Spring, in contrast, brings an outpouring of sound. Snow melts into roaring rapids, geese call overhead as they fly north for the summer, and awakening animals join the chorus. The Cree living around James Bay hear the sea ice begin to groan as it breaks up. In fall, they hear the continual rainfall as eastern winds pick up moisture from the bay and drop it on the coast. A few of the Cree songs I recorded in the Chisasibi area focused on the terrain and weather, seeking such things as a change in the wind direction, but it is the animals—mammals, birds, and fish—which the Cree hunters favoured as song topics. The basin of La Grande River offered a wide variety of animals for them to sing about because this region is a transition zone 1 between the middle and high subarctic. Southern fauna live alongside northern species such as the Arctic fox. Because of the diversified habitats, the soundscape is alive with wildfowl and river birds. Six of the eighty-six songs I recorded were about Canada geese, an important source of food for the Cree. Other songs were about the loon, the partridge, the snowbird, and the migrating brant geese. The hunters also sang about fish—local species include whitefish, cisco, longnose suckers, pike, walleye, white suckers, rounds, burbot, and speckled trout (Berkes 1983, 5)—and the commonly hunted animal species, such as beaver, muskrat, lynx, otter, red fox, black bear, mink, rabbit, red squirrel, and martin. I recorded eight fox songs, five beaver, four otter, two porcupine, one muskrat, one hare, one deer, one lynx, and one whale. The white fox seemed to be of particular interest to the Cree, perhaps because of its scarcity in the Chisasibi area. Beaver was important for the Cree economy, reflected in the number of beaver-related songs and stories. Not only did the Cree hunters know all the sounds the animals make, but also the appropriate sounds a hunter must make to attract them. Several hunters showed how fox and muskrat are attracted by the hunter’s imitation of mouse sounds (a kissing sound made with the lips), while geese responded to imitation goose calls. A beaver was called by a sound that mimicked the noise of another beaver eating branches. The James Bay Cree based their subsistence economy on these species. When I was recording these songs, hunting game still determined the lives of at least half the male population of Chisasibi, although it no longer dictated their dwelling place—only a few families chose to live year-round in a bush camp. Most now maintained a permanent dwelling in the town, and lived only temporarily in camps established for hunting. The performance of the traditional hunting songs is linked to the continuance of subsistence hunting. Although there are exceptions, even the newest generation of Cree appear to value and enjoy bush food. The elders view it not only as physically and mentally nourishing but also as a medicine. Many old people are reluctant to eat most store-bought foods, and when they...