TITLE: Empires, Multiculturalisms and Borrowed Heartsongs: What Does it Mean to Sing Russian/Mennonite Songs?
SPEAKER: Jonathan Dueck
EVENT DATE: 05/21/2008
FORMAT: Video + Captions
RUNNING TIME: 51 minutes
TRANSCRIPT: View Transcript (link will open in a new window)
DESCRIPTION:
Jonathan Dueck presented "Empires, Multiculturalisms and Borrowed Heartsongs: What Does It Mean to Sing Russian/Mennonite Songs?" as part of the Benjamin Botkin lecture series sponsored by the American Folklife Center.
As "colonists" in 19th-century Russia, Mennonites sang German diasporic choral musics and borrowed Russian choral musics; when war drove many to North America, Mennonites drew on this repertoire and borrowed new repertoires to forge links to a new elite: North American classical choral singing circles. This webcast traces this story not as linear narrative, but as genealogical fragments, beginning with the resonances of particular songs for present-day Mennonite writers, historians and singers; and then exploring past moments of the production and reception of these songs in Russia and North America.
Speaker Biography: Jonathan Dueck is an ethnomusicologist and visiting assistant professor at the University of Maryland School of Music.
Related Webcasts
SERIES: Benjamin Botkin Lecture Series
