Marcia Herndon

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Marcia Herndon in 1975

Marcia Alice Herndon (October 1, 1941 – May 19, 1997) was an American ethnomusicologist and anthropologist. She specialized in studies regarding the ways culture and music reflect each other. Herndon grew up in a family of country music performers in North Carolina. After completing her master's degree in 1964 at Tulane University, she performed classical music for several years. Earning a PhD in anthropology and ethnomusicology in 1971, she taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Maryland. She is widely known for her contributions to Native American music studies with her books such as Native American Music, as well as her many works such as Music as Culture, and Music, Gender, and Culture, which analyze the overlapping of musical forms and cultural structures.

Herndon's works have been used as university textbooks, and her contributions to the field of ethnomusicology were recognized by the Society of Ethnomusicology, which created an award in her name. The Marcia Herndon Prize is allotted to those who focus on the studies of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and two-spirit communities.

Early life and education

Marcia Alice Herndon was born October 1, 1941, in Canton, North Carolina near her grandparents' tribe of the Eastern Band of Cherokee.[1] She spent her early years in the Tennessee and North Carolina hills and performed country music with her family. When she began her formal music training, she turned away from country music, focusing on classical music and performance.[2] She played several different instruments including the organ.[1][3]

In 1962, Herndon graduated from H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College in New Orleans, now known as Tulane University, with a bachelor's degree in German.[4] Although she also studied music, covering piano, voice, and organ, Herndon completed her master's degree in German at Tulane University in 1964.[5]: 128 [6] Besides German, she spoke English, French, Malagasy, and Spanish, as well as Cherokee ritual language.[4] After several years of classical music performance, she returned to school and earned a Ph.D. in anthropology and ethnomusicology in 1971 from Tulane.[1][4][6] Her doctoral thesis, under the direction of Norma McLeod, focused on the impact of Maltese music upon the religion and politics of the country. It would become the basis for her article Analysis: The Herding of Sacred Cows?,[5]: 128  which Cynthia Tse Kimberlin, a Navajo ethnomusicologist called one of the "classics of the field".[4]

Career

Herndon started her career as an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin in 1971. She taught ethnomusicology and anthropology at the university for seven years.[6][2] Before she arrived, the university did not include ethnomucology in their folklore studies.[7]: xiii  While teaching in Texas, Herndon developed a course which returned her roots in country music and examined the genre from an anthropological perspective. Students of the course looked at how culturally country music was viewed as music of white, unsophisticated and lower-class people, even for those who gained fame. It also examined how the genre was used as a gateway for singers like Charley Pride and Johnny Rodriguez to gain acceptance in white society.[2] In 1975, Herndon and McLeod hosted the symposium "Form in Performance: Hard Core Ethnography" in Austin. The conference brought together for the first time scholars of various disciplines to discuss performance as a reflection of culture and societal values.[7]: 7  The subsequent publication of the conference proceedings was edited by Herndon.[5]: 128 

In 1978, Herndon was hired as the director of Native American Studies the University of California, Berkeley. She became active in the civil rights movements sweeping the country at that time, including the American Indian Movement and the feminist movement.[5]: 129 [8] Wanting to create a venue which would support independent scholarship without censorship in ethnomusicological research, in 1984, she founded the Music Research Institute, in Hercules, California.[4][5]: 129  She encouraged research into issues such as the demise of American community orchestras, censorship of lyrics, and the effects to hearing caused by amplified sound. Her activism and support of alternative research led to a fissure with the university and she left in 1985.[5]: 129 

Herndon continued working at the Music Research Institute, expanding it from its location in the San Francisco Bay Area by creating branches in Richmond, California and Hyattsville, Maryland.[4] In 1987, she became the co-chair of the International Council for Traditional Music’s Music and Gender Study Group, introducing interdisciplinary studies on the cultural construction of gender and its impacts on music and performance.[5]: 130  In 1989, Herndon, who had a history of lupus, had a stroke, which resulted in deafness in one ear and left her with sensitivity in her feet.[5]: 131  Despite these health issues, in 1990, she became a professor in the division of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at the School of Music at the University of Maryland. At the same time, she served as an affiliate of the Women's Studies Department.[6] Herndon remained active, in spite of a subsequent cancer diagnosis, hosting the international conference, "Gender and the Musics of Death" for the Music and Gender Study Group of the International Council for Traditional Music. The event was hosted at the University of Maryland in November 1996.[5]: 130–131 

Community involvement

Herndon referred to herself as a "half-breed", rather than an elder of the Eastern Cherokee Nation.[5]: 131 [9] She was an authority on Cherokee traditions and trained as a Cherokee healer.[6][5]: 131  Her knowledge of traditions and ceremony often came through as she retold stories, such as how medicine came to the Cherokee. Colleagues would tell others of her healing touch and appreciated how she could sense who endured suffering and help others without drawing much attention to herself.[5]: 131 

Herndon was the Metropolitan (head bishop) of the Ecumenical Catholic Church of America.[6] As Metropolitan, she held the highest national authority of the church founded by the Apostle Thomas in India. Her duties for the church included administrating policies, counselling her congregations, officiating at weddings, and ordaining gay and lesbian priests.[6][5]: 130 

Herndon and her partner, Billye Talmadge, were together twenty years until the time of her death. Despite her desire for privacy surrounding her personal life,[5]: 131  Herndon was an active member of her community, focusing on the cultural issues of racial equality, sexual and gender diversity, and religious freedom and tolerance. She encouraged academic cooperation rather than competition, and believed that cultural studies were imperative for a full understanding of global situations and catastrophic events, such aggression, censorship, ethics, as well as health, power, and war.[4]

Contributions to ethnomusicology

Herndon's work encompassed a broad spectrum of cultural examination. She examined symphony orchestras in New Orleans and Oakland and studied jazz funerals of Mardi Gras Indians. She analyzed the culture of urban Native Americans in Texas, variations of pow wow celebrations in native societies, refugees from Tibet in Switzerland, the impact of aggression and violence reflected in music in Bosnia, and hymns of Martin Luther King through time. Field work studies included work on the perceptions of young people with regard to rock music and the impact of amplification on hearing.[6][5]: 128  Her interests exceeded those of many in the field, combining her anthropological interests to study music and cultural change, healing, and gender studies.[4]

Herndon was an authority of the Eastern Band Cherokee music and performance. Her major contributions to the field of Cherokee culture included The Cherokee Ballgame Cycle: An Ethnomusicologists Viewpoint (1971) and Native American Music (1980).[5]: 128  In The Cherokee Ballgame Cycle, Herndon discussed how Cherokee ballgames reflected the cultural organization of their society through performance.[10]: 347  For example, the ballgames were organized to reflect the political and religious organization of the local settlements.[11]: 327  Each town, and the game, had a division of white peace officials and red war officials with representatives of from each of the seven matrilineal clans.[11]: 328  Labor was divided by sex,[11]: 329  as were the songs sung during the game to motivate the players. During the games, songs sung by women representing each clan were sexual in nature[12]: 138  and were meant to humiliate and remove power from the other team. The songs could not be sung by the women themselves, but were performed by the male dance leader or conjurer.[9]: 90–91 [11]: 333–334  In Native American Music, Herndon went beyond traditional generalizations about the development of Native American music, bringing an anthropological analysis of culture and incorporating the native view, through comparison of Euro-American and Native American traditions.[13]

As her work on the Cherokee shows, Herndon saw music as an expression of culture and she was one of the pioneers in evaluating music from a gender perspective.[4] For example, in her work Music, Gender, and Culture, co-written with Susanne Ziegler, Herndon explained that sex and gender are different things. She states that sex describes physical body, and gender describes one's individual cultural role and status.[14]: 115  The book describes how individuals perceive their gender and gender traits based upon their society, and details some of the ways society rewards and punishes certain behaviors related to one's gender — for example, by restricting or allowing who can be a vocalist or instrumentalist.[15]: 236  Her study The Bormliza: Maltese Folksong Style and Women with McLeod noted that women in Malta who sing in public places are considered to be prostitutes, while those who refrain from public performance are deemed to be of good moral character.[16]: 34  Music as Culture written with her former doctoral advisor McLeod, has been used as a university textbook.[4] The premise of the book was that music was not simply an activity that was part of culture, but a representation of culture itself. Steven Feld, in his review of the work, clarified the point that "sound structure is a social structure, every musical organization a social organization, learning to sing is learning to be a social being, good rhythm is socialization, and so forth".[17]: 91 

Death and legacy

Herndon died on May 19, 1997, in Hyattsville, Maryland, from complications of lupus, breast cancer, and liver cancer.[1][4] Herndon worked with the Society for Ethnomusicology beginning in 1971. She served on its council for three terms — 1976–1979, 1980–1983, and 1988–1991 — and on its Board of Directors between 1981 and 1983.[5]: 130  In recognition of her service to both the organization and the field of ethnomusicology, the Society of Ethnomusicology, created an award in her name, which recognizes excellence in studies of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and two-spirit communities.[18] Her papers are held in the collection of the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library on the campus of the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland.[6]

Selected works

  • Herndon, Marcia (September 1971). "The Cherokee Ballgame Cycle: An Ethnomusicologist's View". Ethnomusicology. 15 (3). Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press for the Society for Ethnomusicology: 339–352. doi:10.2307/850634. ISSN 0014-1836. OCLC 79038677. JSTOR 850634.[5]: 128 
  • Herndon, Marcia (May 1974). "Analysis: The Herding of Sacred Cows?". Ethnomusicology. 18 (2). Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press for the Society for Ethnomusicology: 219–262. doi:10.2307/850580. ISSN 0014-1836. OCLC 5556141795. JSTOR 850580.[4][5]: 128 
  • Herndon, Marcia, ed. (1976). Proceedings of a Symposium on Form in Performance: Hard-core Ethnography. Form in Performance: Hard-core Ethnography, Held at the University of Texas, Austin, April 17 to 19, 1975. Austin, Texas: Office of the College of Fine Arts, University of Texas. OCLC 215392558.[5]: 128 
  • McLeod, Norma; Herndon, Marcia (January–March 1975). "The Bormliza: Maltese Folksong Style and Women". Journal of American Folklore. 88 (347). Bloomington, Indiana: American Folklore Society: 81–100. doi:10.2307/539187. ISSN 0021-8715. OCLC 5548782943. JSTOR 539187.[16]: 34 
  • Herndon, Marcia; McLeod, Norma (1979). Music as Culture. Norwood, Pennsylvania: Norwood Editions. OCLC 602614481.[4][5]: 128 
  • Herndon, Marcia (1980). Native American Music. Norwood, Pennsylvania: Norwood Editions. ISBN 978-0-8482-4475-0.[4][5]: 128 
  • McLeod, Norma; Herndon, Marcia (1980). The Ethnography of Musical Performance. Norwood, Pennsylvania: Norwood Editions. ISBN 978-0-8482-4416-3.[4]
  • Herndon, Marcia; McLeod, Norma (1983). Field Manual for Ethnomusicology. Norwood, Pennsylvania: Norwood Editions. OCLC 637781307.[4]
  • Herndon, Marcia (1988). "Cultural Engagement: The Case of the Oakland Symphony Orchestra". Yearbook for Traditional Music. 20. Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press: 134–145. doi:10.2307/768170. ISSN 0740-1558. OCLC 5548116247.[4]
  • Herndon, Marcia; Ziegler, Susanne (1990). Music, Gender, and Culture. Intercultural Music Studies. Vol. 1. Wilhelmshaven, Germany: Florian Noetzel Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7959-0593-4.[4][5]: 128 

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Obituary". EOL 3. Baltimore, Maryland: University of Maryland, Baltimore County. 1997. Archived from the original on July 23, 2020. Retrieved May 19, 2022.
  2. ^ a b c "Course Views Country Music with Anthropological Eye". Denton Record-Chronicle. Denton, Texas. May 9, 1975. p. 21. Retrieved May 19, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ "Country Music Goes to College". Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Lubbock, Texas. April 27, 1975. p. 36. Retrieved May 19, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Kimberlin, Cynthia Tse; Moisala, Pirkko (1997). "In Memoriam Marcia Alice Herndon". Bulletin of the International Council for Traditional Music (XCI). Point Richmond, California: Music Research Institute: 20–21. ISSN 0739-1390. Archived from the original on February 25, 2021. Retrieved May 19, 2022.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Robertson, Carolina (Winter 1998). "Remembering Marcia Herndon (1 October 1941-19 May 1997)". Ethnomusicology. 42 (1). Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press for the Society for Ethnomusicology: 128–132. ISSN 0014-1836. OCLC 5556203488. Retrieved May 19, 2022.
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i Horstman, Nicole (June 2013). "Marcia Herndon Papers". Archival Collections. College Park, Maryland: University of Maryland. Archived from the original on November 25, 2020. Retrieved May 19, 2022.
  7. ^ a b Buchanan, Donna A. (2014). "Introduction: Doing Ethnomusicology "Texas-Style": A Musical (Re)Turn to Performance". In Buchanan, Donna A. (ed.). Soundscapes from the Americas: Ethnomusicological Essays on the Power, Poetics, and Ontology of Performance. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing. pp. 1–24. ISBN 978-1-4724-1583-7.
  8. ^ Elwood, Phillip (September 9, 1988). "A Weekend Filled to the Brim with Music". The San Francisco Examiner. San Francisco, California. p. 60. Retrieved May 19, 2022 – via Newspapers.com.
  9. ^ a b Levine, Victoria Lindsay, ed. (2002). "Example 91". Writing American Indian Music: Historic Transcriptions, Notations, and Arrangements. Music of the United States of America. Vol. 11. Middleton, Wisconsin: A-R Editions. pp. 199–200. ISBN 978-0-89579-494-9.
  10. ^ Keeling, Richard (1997). North American Indian Music: A Guide to Published Sources and Selected Recordings. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities. Vol. 1440. New York, New York: Garland Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8153-0232-2.
  11. ^ a b c d Fogelson, Raymond (September 1971). "The Cherokee Ballgame Cycle: An Ethnographer's View". Ethnomusicology. 15 (3). Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press for the Society for Ethnomusicology: 327–338. doi:10.2307/850633. ISSN 0014-1836. OCLC 79679423. JSTOR 850633.
  12. ^ Krus, Anthony Michal (2011). "Bridging History and Prehistory The Possible Antiquity of a Native American Ballgame". Native South. 4 (1). Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press: 136–145. doi:10.1353/nso.2011.0004. ISSN 1943-2569. OCLC 750091817. Retrieved May 20, 2022. – via Project MUSE (subscription required)
  13. ^ Rhodes, Willard (Summer 1983). "Reviewed Work: Native American Music by Marcia Herndon". American Music. 1 (2). Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press: 97–99. doi:10.2307/3051516. ISSN 0734-4392. OCLC 7781098289. Retrieved May 20, 2022.
  14. ^ Giglio, Virginia (Winter 1993). "Reviewed Work: Music, Gender, and Culture by Marcia Herndon, Susanne Ziegler, Max Peter Baumann". Ethnomusicology. 37 (1). Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois Press for the Society for Ethnomusicology: 115–117. doi:10.2307/852250. ISSN 0014-1836. OCLC 5548113640. Retrieved May 19, 2022.
  15. ^ Scharfenberger, Angela (2011). "West African Women in Music: An Analysis of Scholarship, Women's Participation in Music in West Africa: A Reflection on Fieldwork, Self, and Understanding". African Music. 9 (1). Grahamstown, South Africa: International Library of African Music: 221–246. ISSN 0065-4019. OCLC 820817847. Retrieved May 19, 2022.
  16. ^ a b Koskoff, Ellen (2014). A Feminist Ethnomusicology: Writings on Music and Gender (PDF). Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-03849-5. Archived (PDF) from the original on May 20, 2022.
  17. ^ Feld, Steven (1980). "Reviewed Work: Music as Culture by Marcia Herndon, Norma McLeod". Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council. 12. Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press: 91–93. doi:10.2307/767658. ISSN 0316-6082. OCLC 5556232857. Retrieved May 20, 2022.
  18. ^ "Appert Receives 2021 Marcia Herndon Prize". Music Department Cornell. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University. December 6, 2021. Archived from the original on May 19, 2022. Retrieved May 19, 2022.

Category:1941 births Category:1997 deaths Category:American musicologists Category:Native American women academics Category:Native American academics Category:Native American women writers Category:Native American women writers Category:Cherokee people Category:Tulane University alumni Category:University of Texas at Austin faculty Category:University of California, Berkeley faculty Category:University System of Maryland faculty

External links

The Marcia Herndon papers at the University of Maryland

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marcia_Herndon&oldid=1088890307"