L27 Music 3026

Aspects of Native American & Hispanic Music & Culture in New Mexico

A juxtaposition of Pueblo, Navajo, Hispanic, and Anglo cultures, focusing upon Native American prehistory and history; contrasts between Pueblo & Navajo views of creation and cosmology; comparisons of Navajo & Pueblo society, ceremony, music, and art; Hispanic incursions into the southwest; Pueblo-Spanish relations (confrontation and compromise with Catholicism); Navajo-US relations (the Long Walk and its aftermath).

After weekly, 2-hour preparatory class meetings at Washington University in April, the course continues with a trip to New Mexico and Arizona from May 17-May 27, visiting Gallup, NM; Hubbell's Trading Post (Ganado, AZ); Canyon de Chelly (AZ); sandpainting, song and dance demonstrations at a Navajo household in Shiprock, NM; visits to back country Navajo ruins in the Dinetah of central NM; Taos Pueblo; Bandelier National Monument and Tsankawi Ruin. The trip concludes with four days in Santa Fe, NM, including a tour of Rancho de Las Golondrinas, the reconstructed early 18th-century placita and 200-acre living history museum, and visits to the Museum of Southwestern Indian Arts and Culture, the Wheelwright Museum, the Santa Fe Palace of Governors, the collection of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society, and other relevant sites. The trip involves some back country hiking and therefore is somewhat challenging physically.