Dr. Lynn Whidden’s Essential Song: Three Decades of Northern Cree Music nominated for Book of the Year award

Thu, Mar 13, 2008

BRANDON, MB – Congratulations to Dr. Lynn Whidden, a Professor in the Brandon University Northern Teachers Education Program (BUNTEP), whose recent book Essential Song: Three Decades of Northern Cree Music has been named as a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Tenth Annual Book of the Year award, in the music category. ForeWord features reviews of independently published books.Nearly 1,600 books were entered in 61 categories for the awards. These were narrowed to 658 finalists, from 350 publishers. The winners will be determined by a panel of librarians and booksellers, selected from ForeWord’s readership. Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners, as well as Editor’s Choice Prizes for Fiction and Nonfiction, will be announced at a special program at BookExpo America at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles on May 29, 2008. The winners of the two Editor’s Choice Prizes will be awarded $1,500 each.

Essential Song also recently received a “Highly Recommended” designation from reviewer Bruno Nettl in Choice, a publication of the American Association of College and Research Libraries.

Essential Song, a study of subarctic Cree hunting songs, is the first detailed ethnomusicology of the northern Cree of Quebec and Manitoba. The result of more than two decades spent in the North learning from the Cree, Dr. Whidden’s account discusses the tradition of the hunting songs, their meanings and origins, and their importance to the hunt. She also examines women’s songs, and traces the impact of social change—including the introduction of hymns, Gospel tunes, and country music—on the song traditions of these communities.

The book also explores the introduction of powwow song into the subarctic and the Cree’s struggle to maintain their Aboriginal heritage—to find a kind of song that, like the hunting songs, can serve as a spiritual guide and force.

Including profiles of the hunters and their songs and accompanied by an original audio CD of more than fifty Cree hunting songs, Essential Song makes an important contribution to ethnomusicology, social history, and Aboriginal studies, and is available now from Wilfrid Laurier University Press: http://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/press/Catalog/whidden.shtml

Dr. Lynn Whidden is a Professor of Native studies and music at Brandon University in Brandon, Manitoba. Her research has focused on the role of songs in the lives of subarctic Cree and Caribou Inuit. She has published many articles on the song traditions of the Métis and the Dakota and has contributed to numerous television and radio broadcasts about Aboriginal song.

For further information, or to arrange an interview or photo regarding this story, please contact:

Kelly Stifora
Communications Officer
Brandon University
Phone: (204) 727-9762
Email: communications@brandonu.ca

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