Excerpt from:

Kay Kaufmann Shelemay, Soundscapes: Exploring Music in a Changing World
Expected from Norton press in Jan. 2001

> Juneau, Alaska
>
> Modern Juneau, known as "Auk Ani" (Auk City) to the indigenous Tlingit
> people of the region, is a young town. Founded in the aftermath of the
> gold rush in the 1880s, by 1900 it was capital of the Alaska territory,
> which subsequently became the 49th state when it joined the union in 1959.
> Juneau's character is shaped by its history as a frontier town, but even
> more so by its geographic setting. Wedged between imposing mountains and
> icefields on one side, and the Gastineau Channel separating it from
> Douglas Island on the other, Juneau is accessible only by sea and air-by
> "flying or floating," in local parlance. Its isolation has kept the town
> small, just over 30,000 people, except for the hours each afternoon during
> the short summer season when the streets near the docks are crowded with
> tourists briefly disembarking from luxury liners sailing the scenic Inside
> Passage.

> Yet despite its isolated locale and difficulty of access, Juneau has a
> vibrant musical life sustained on a largely voluntary basis by people
> permanently living in the region. Many musical organizations have
> sprung up over time, founded by musicians who make their living mainly
> through regular jobs in a wide variety of professions and in the city,
> state, and federal government offices that play a prominent role in the
> local economy. In its musical complexity, Juneau provides an instructive
> example of the richness of musical life even in small and seemingly
> isolated places.

> Music-making is a regular item on the calendars of community organizations
> around town. Of course, music has always been a part of indigenous Tlingit
> life in southeastern Alaska, but the last fifteen to twenty years have
> witnessed a revival of the Native musical heritage through the activities
> of organizations within Native communities and with the financial support
> of the Sealaska Heritage Foundation. The Sealaska Celebration-a large,
> pan-tribal musical gathering held every two years and recorded on
> videotape-differs from the powwows of much of the rest of North America.
> It models itself on the potlatch, a ceremony involving competitive gift
> exchange long practiced on the northwest coast.

> In between the formal festivals, Tlingit musical traditions are maintained
> in Juneau through local institutions such as the Native Culture Center,
> which is the home of the Juneau Tlingit Dancers.

> Juneau's large and active Filipino community had its earliest roots in late
> eighteenth-century Filipino seamen who arrived with Spanish sailing
> expeditions and whaling expeditions. By the early twentieth century,
> Filipino men settled as workers in the Alaskan salmon cannery and mining
> industries, many marrying into Tlingit and other First Nation communities.
> The Filipino Community Center, an outgrowth of an organization started in
> 1929, was originally built so that Juneau Filipinos would have a place to
> host community events in the face of racial discrimination. Decades after
> the Juneau community integrated all facilities, the Filipino Community
> Center remains a center for community life, hosting Friday night as
> "family night," featuring karaoke. On other evenings, members of the local
> community as well as tourists used to visit the waterfront's City Cafe,
> which featured its own lively karaoke performances until it recently was
> torn down and replaced by a convenience store. All of Juneau looks forward
> to the colorfully-costumed Filipino drummers who perform in the civic
> parade mounted every July 4th.

> Music can also be heard regularly in local Juneau churches. The tiny blue
> and white Saint Nicholas Orthodox Church sits perched high on 5th Street,
> its cupola outlined against the huge mountain looming behind it. Since
> the church's construction in 1894 by Tlingit people and Russian
> immigrants, mass has been chanted on Sunday in English, Slavonic, and
> Tlingit languages amid colorful icons and the smell of incense.

> Numerous local eateries provide venues for regular musical performance. The
> popular Fiddlehead Restaurant features local jazz ensembles on Friday and
> Saturday evenings. Folk musicians such as Betsy Sims and Buddy Tabor
> perform around town at places like the outdoor "Salmon Bake" and at
> historic saloons such as the "Alaskan" and the "Red Dog." During the
> summer season, regular Concerts in the Park feature an eclectic assortment
> of local music groups ranging from the Stroller White Pipes & Drums &
> Highland Dancers, to Koinania, to African Rain. During the warm weather,
> the Juneau Lyric Opera sponsors evening cruises leaving from Auke Bay
> harbor, featuring performances of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.
> The influx of tourists has further encouraged presentations such as the
> "Gold Nugget Revue," the most recent performance mounted to tell the story
> of the founding of Juneau in a musical revue complete with can-can dancers.

> Many songs recall the late nineteenth-century Gold Rush that brought
> settlers to the territory. The attraction of the Alaska Gold Rush proved
> too tempting for many, including adventurers who rushed north from
> Minnesota in search of riches. This particular folk song has been
> sustained in the oral tradition by the singer, June Baldridge of Dodge
> Center, Minnesota, who was born in 1924 and recalls learning the song as a
> child. The composer is unknown, but the text is said to come from a letter
> sent to the editor of the Minneapolis Tribune from a woman who wanted her
> father to come home from the Gold Rush. This song is one of many which
> have been revived in present-day Alaska for the entertainment of tourists
> anxious to recapture the sounds of the Gold Rush. Because the discovery in
> the adjacent Yukon region was the first and largest, many of the songs were
> written about the Yukon, but sung for the other Alaskan rushes as well.

> Other unexpected sites for musical performance include the State Office
> Building, where regular noontime organ concerts are performed on a Kimball
> Theatre Pipe Organ permanently installed in the atrium, and where
> listeners eat bag lunches while gazing out on the wooded slopes of Douglas
> Island to the accompaniment of a varied selection of nineteenth and
> twentieth-century popular songs.

> But music-making in Juneau has also been institutionalized. The Juneau
> Symphony, founded more than thirty years ago, both provides a forum for
> local musicians to perform and offers educational programs. Individual
> players have founded smaller groups that play at events around town, such
> as the "Fiery Gypsies," founded by violinist Steve Tada, which also features accordionist Dale
>Wygant, and which plays everything from tango to klezmer music, to a brass quintet, to a
> handbell choir.

> Sally Schlichting, Juneau Symphony flutist, comments that "in a small town
> you have to be creative with what you have. You have limited resources and
> always have to substitute." She offers as a prime example a chamber
> ensemble called "Nimbus," of which she is a member and which takes its name
> from Robert Murray's free-form metal sculpture that now stands outside the
> Alaska State Museum. The ensemble, says Schlichting, "would be a string
> quartet" if a cellist had been available in Juneau. Instead, they
> substituted the euphonium for the cello, and, with first violinists also
> scarce, nominated flutist Schlichting for the first violin part. Other
> than avoiding compositions that require violin techniques such as playing
> two strings at once, termed "double stops," "Nimbus" plays pretty much
> everything from standard quartet repertory, to early music, to Beatles
> tunes. "It's an amazing sound," Schlichting reports. "Once you hear it,
> the blending is fabulous."

> The Juneau community is closely linked in its economy and cultural life to
> neighboring communities of the Alexander Archipelago, with longtime ties to
> the nearby communities-Sitka, Skagway, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Haines-each a
> few hours away by ferry or a short flight. For many musicians raised in
> Juneau, this interactive musical environment engenders a deep sense of
> regional community and collaboration. From their earliest years in
> schools, Juneau's children travel with their high school sports teams and
> musical groups to perform together in different Southeast Alaskan
> communities. High school students, such as those currently in the Firewood
> String Quartet, learn early on to contribute to local musical life.
> Regional cooperation is particularly marked in the annual cycle of music
> festivals held in Southeast Alaska. A small number of energetic musicians
> shoulder the responsibility for this aspect of local musical life-often
> sharing lives as well as musical pursuits. Since 1972, Sitka has hosted a
> classical music festival, including many musicians who are regular
> participants and who return each year for a summer residency as well as
> additional concerts in September and February. Paul Rosenthal, founder of
> the Sitka Festival, is married to Linda Rosenthal, who is both founder and
> coordinator of the Juneau Jazz and Classics Festival.

> Since 1975, the Alaska Folk Festival has been held each April in Juneau's
> Centennial Hall. People come from all around the region and as far away as
> Anchorage, taking a welcome musical break near the end of the winter when
> everyone one is "fed up with the whole thing" and the folk festival
> provides "a little warmth."

> During the rest of the year, local folk groups such the all-female
> "Glacial Erratics" continue to perform, and individuals such as Linda and
> Russ Hansen continue to teach country and western dancing in venues from
> bars to churches, the Pioneers home and the schools (Juneau Empire, Friday,
> July 9, 1999).

> The ties that bind this region-ties born of the unusual topography, a
> common life style, and a deep background of Tlingit culture-ensure that
> many musicians will continue to participate in Juneau's musical life,
> despite careers that may take them far away. One recent example is the
> founding of the First Annual Southeast Alaska International Contemporary
> Music Festival-called CrossSound-in the summer of 1999, with two inaugural
> concerts held at Juneau's Northern Lights Church and the Chapel on the
> Lake. Juneau native Jocelyn Clark-an ethnomusicologist and accomplished
> performer on zither traditions of Korea, Japan, and China-returned to
> Juneau to found this innovative music festival with her husband,
> German-born composer Stefan Hakenberg. With the support of the Juneau
> Arts and Humanities Council and the help of Clark's local family and
> friends, CrossSound revives and elaborates the vision of the "Alaska Music
> Trail," an international concert series that for twenty-five years annually
> visited eighteen Alaskan and Western Canadian towns beginning in the
> 1940s. CrossSound restores the international vision of the earlier series,
> but also encourages unexpected musical connections, commissioning and
> performing new works for instruments such as the Korean changgo drum and
> the Baroque cello. If Clark's Juneau roots have led her to renew an older
> tradition of musical diversity at home in Alaska, Hakenberg's long
> experience in Europe with alternative cultural projects that mix
> professionals and amateurs in performing music also fits nicely into
> Southeast Alaska's musical milieu. As CrossSound develops, its founders
> hope that it will eventually be a winter festival, so that full-time Juneau
> residents can participate fully during the period of the year when they
> have the most free time. In CrossSound, one meets old and new Juneau head
> on: a musical festival deeply rooted in Southeast Alaska traditions,
> emerging from local interests and experience, yet drawing on a full measure
> of outside creativity and stimulation from around the globe.