Literary Branch
hosted by Mark Lewis

Ojai Art Center Zoom Event:
​Poetry Songs of the Shoshone Ghost Dance
Judith Vander

Monday, February 8, 2021 at 7 p.m.

E-mail OACVanderEvent@gmail.com to attend this event via Zoom.

In the 19th century, belief in and performance of the Ghost Dance Religion swept through many tribes of the Great Basin and Plains. For many years, Judith Vander worked with the Shoshones of Wyoming, recording 147 Ghost Dance songs, each with a short poetic text, beautiful ecological scenes drawn from nature. Choosing a representative sampling, she will present an English translation of the poetic text and let you hear what the Shoshone singer had to say about the meaning of the text. Finally, Judith will sing the song in the original Shoshone language. The Great Basin version of the Ghost Dance invokes the power of song and dance to protect Shoshone health, and to make the world of plants and animals abundant. They reveal how Shoshones understood and related to their natural world.  


Judith Vander 
Judith received her musical training in both Composition and Ethnomusicology at the University of Michigan. From 1977 to 1997 she researched and wrote about Wind River Shoshone music and culture. In 1989 her book Songprints: The Musical Experience of Five Shoshone Women, won the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award as well as the Pauline Alderman Prize for New Scholarship on Women in Music. In 1998 her book Shoshone Ghost Dance Religion: Poetry Songs and Great Basin Context won the Alan Merriam Prize for outstanding book in ethnomusicology. The complete text of her 1986 monograph, Ghost Dance Songs and Religion of a Wind River Shoshone Woman, is on her website (judithvander.com) and can be downloaded free of charge. Since moving to Ojai in 2002 with her husband, Judith has served as secretary of the Ojai Music Festival Bravo Program, on the board of the Ojai Youth Opera, and as head of the Music Branch of the Ojai Art Center, where she initiated the longstanding Chamber Music Series.


In 1998, Judith returned to composing. Her “Powwow Suite for Organ and Flute” is recorded on Marijim Thoene’s CD “Wind Song.” Her latest works are a children’s opera, “The Snow Queen,” and “A Darwin Cantata,” a musical setting of texts from Darwin’s "On The Origin of Species" for solo soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, with piano and oboe accompaniment.   

If you  wish to receive notification of future literary branch events please send your e-mail to mlewis1054@aol.com

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