Music and change in Nain, Nunatsiavut: More White does not always mean less Inuit
This paper focuses on Inuitized Western music in Nain, Labrador, as part of a broader look at Inuit responses to change. Drawing on interviews and sustained ethnographic research, I show how a relaxing of strict socio-musical categories coincided with a decline in Moravian missionary influence in th...
| Published in: | Études/Inuit/Studies |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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Association Inuksiutiit Katimajiit Inc.
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1028852ar https://doi.org/10.7202/1028852ar |
| Summary: | This paper focuses on Inuitized Western music in Nain, Labrador, as part of a broader look at Inuit responses to change. Drawing on interviews and sustained ethnographic research, I show how a relaxing of strict socio-musical categories coincided with a decline in Moravian missionary influence in the second half of the 20th century. A notable indifference to musical difference is, I suggest, consistent with an Inuit equanimity toward environmental forces of change that cannot be helped (ajunamat). I then give reasons why discursive imbalances are a continued concern and show how the effects of sustained colonial and missionary activity (hybridities, mixtures, overlaps, co-presences) do not always produce the emotional and psychic dissonances sometimes associated with postcolonial ambivalence. Ultimately, I propose thinking of Inuitized Western musical forms as visible protrusions of a much deeper substrate of affective continuities and that such inherited ways of being in the world can remain constant even while specific cultural forms may change. Cet article porte sur les réinterprétations inuit de la musique occidentale à Nain, au Labrador, dans le cadre d’une étude des réactions des Inuit au changement. En me basant sur des entrevues et une recherche ethnographique approfondie, je démontre que le relâchement de la rigidité des catégories socio-musicales a coïncidé avec le déclin de l’influence missionnaire morave au cours de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle. Je suggère que l’indifférence à la différence musicale traduit l’équanimité des Inuit devant les forces environnementales d’un changement «que l’on ne peut empêcher» (ajunamat). J’expose ensuite les raisons pour lesquelles le déséquilibre discursif reste une préoccupation constante et je démontre que les effets d’une activité coloniale et missionnaire soutenue (métissages, mélanges, chevauchements, coprésences) ne produisent pas toujours les discordances émotionnelles et psychiques que l’on associe parfois à l’ambivalence postcoloniale. En fin de compte, ... |
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