Songprints: The Musical Experience of Five Shoshone Women

Perspectives on the twentieth-century lives of Shoshone women musicians

The musical lives of Native American women have experienced a century of cultural change and constancy. Judith Vander takes readers to the Shoshone of Wyoming's Wind River Reservation to meet five generations of Shoshone women. Vander's conversations with Emily, Angelina, Alberta, Helene, and Lenore capture their distinct personalities as they share their thoughts, feelings, and attitudes toward their music.

Vander transcribes and analyzes seventy-five songs that the women sing. Each woman possesses a unique songprint--a repertoire distinctive to her culture, age, and personality. As Vander shows, the context of Shoshone social and religious ceremonies offers insights into the rise of the Native American Church, the emergence and popularity of the contemporary powwow, and the changing, enlarging role of women. In addition, two eyewitnesses accounts of Ghost Dance songs and performances elaborate on the function and meaning of the Ghost Dance among the Wind River Shoshones.

2nd Place from the Pauline Alderman Prize for New Scholarship on Women in Music from the International Congress on Women in Music. Winner of an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, 1989.