Hmong Songs of Memory

Hmong Songs of Memory

Author: Victoria Vorreiter

Publisher:

Published: 2016-11-27

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780998123905

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The Hmong Songs of Memory: Traditional Secular and Sacred Hmong Music book and ethnographic film offer the reader, viewer, and listener an absorbing multi-sensory experience to explore the age-old music, ceremonies, and beliefs of the Hmong. Vivid accounts of Hmong shamans, healers, ritual specialists, headmen, musicians, and villagers are brought to life by over 350 color photographs and an enclosed 75-minute DVD in Hmong and English.The Hmong have developed an astonishingly rich culture over millennia as they migrated from their source in Mongolia and Siberia, moving from mountaintop to mountaintop along the great rivers of China to the foothills of Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar, and, presently, to the four corners of the world.An agrarian people keenly attuned to the cycles of seasons and the wheel of life, the Hmong have created a complex, all-encompassing belief system rooted in animism, where everything in nature possesses a soul and the universe is organized by supernatural powers. Frequent rituals, ceremonies, and festivals are performed throughout the year to maintain harmony between the world of man and realm of spirits, be they benevolent or malevolent.The medium propelling these rites is music, which springs from a vast repository of songs, chants, invocations, and instrumental pieces that chart the human experience. This soundscape pervades daily life as it does sacred enactments. For a culture that historically had no literary tradition, music also serves as the most powerful channel for transmitting everything the Hmong know about their inner and outer lives, linking the first ancestors with present generations and beyond.Hmong Songs of Memory: Traditional Secular and Sacred Hmong Music. Text, photographs, and film by Victoria Vorreiter. Summary: Hmong Songs of Memory: Traditional Secular and Sacred Hmong Music, a book of essays and photographs accompanied by an ethnographic film, explores the Hmong vocal and instrumental musical heritage and the Hmong beliefs, traditions, and rituals that music animates. The lyrics of all pieces are cited in both the Hmong and English languages. (281 pages)


The Song Poet

The Song Poet

Author: Kao Kalia Yang

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2016-05-10

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1627794956

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From the author of The Latehomecomer, a powerful memoir of her father, a Hmong song poet who sacrificed his gift for his children's future in America In the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts the story of his people, their history and tragedies, joys and losses; extemporizing or drawing on folk tales, he keeps the past alive, invokes the spirits and the homeland, and records courtships, births, weddings, and wishes. Following her award-winning book The Latehomecomer, Kao Kalia Yang now retells the life of her father Bee Yang, the song poet, a Hmong refugee in Minnesota, driven from the mountains of Laos by American's Secret War. Bee lost his father as a young boy and keenly felt his orphanhood. He would wander from one neighbor to the next, collecting the things they said to each other, whispering the words to himself at night until, one day, a song was born. Bee sings the life of his people through the war-torn jungle and a Thai refugee camp. But the songs fall away in the cold, bitter world of a Minneapolis housing project and on the factory floor until, with the death of Bee's mother, the songs leave him for good. But before they do, Bee, with his poetry, has polished a life of poverty for his children, burnished their grim reality so that they might shine. Written with the exquisite beauty for which Kao Kalia Yang is renowned, The Song Poet is a love story -- of a daughter for her father, a father for his children, a people for their land, their traditions, and all that they have lost.


Musical Minorities

Musical Minorities

Author: Lonán Ó Briain

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0190626968

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Musical Minorities is the first English-language monograph on the performing arts of an ethnic minority in Vietnam. Living primarily in the northern mountains, the Hmong have strategically maintained their cultural distance from foreign invaders and encroaching state agencies for almost two centuries. They use cultural heritage as a means of maintaining a resilient community identity, one which is malleable to their everyday needs and to negotiations among themselves and with others in the vicinity. Case studies of revolutionary songs, countercultural rock, traditional vocal and instrumental styles, tourist shows, animist and Christian rituals, and light pop from the diaspora illustrate the diversity of their creative outputs. This groundbreaking study reveals how performing arts shape understandings of ethnicity and nationality in contemporary Vietnam. Based on three years of fieldwork, Lon n Briain traces the circulation of organized sounds that contribute to the adaptive capacities of this diverse social group. In an original investigation of the sonic materialization of social identity, the book outlines the full multiplicity of Hmong music-making through a fascinating account of music, minorities, and the state in a post-socialist context.


Hmong Qeej Music Textbook

Hmong Qeej Music Textbook

Author: Long Vang

Publisher:

Published: 2013-05-07

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13: 9781484914182

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The Hmong Qeej Music Textbook is providing the best tools for those who seriously want to learn how to play Hmong Qeej Instrument without an instructor or a mentor.


The Latehomecomer

The Latehomecomer

Author: Kao Kalia Yang

Publisher: Coffee House Press

Published: 2010-12-15

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1566892627

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In search of a place to call home, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to America. But lacking a written language of their own, the Hmong experience has been primarily recorded by others. Driven to tell her family’s story after her grandmother’s death, The Latehomecomer is Kao Kalia Yang’s tribute to the remarkable woman whose spirit held them all together. It is also an eloquent, firsthand account of a people who have worked hard to make their voices heard. Beginning in the 1970s, as the Hmong were being massacred for their collaboration with the United States during the Vietnam War, Yang recounts the harrowing story of her family’s captivity, the daring rescue undertaken by her father and uncles, and their narrow escape into Thailand where Yang was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp. When she was six years old, Yang’s family immigrated to America, and she evocatively captures the challenges of adapting to a new place and a new language. Through her words, the dreams, wisdom, and traditions passed down from her grandmother and shared by an entire community have finally found a voice. Together with her sister, Kao Kalia Yang is the founder of a company dedicated to helping immigrants with writing, translating, and business services. A graduate of Carleton College and Columbia University, Yang has recently screened The Place Where We Were Born, a film documenting the experiences of Hmong American refugees. Visit her website at www.kaokaliayang.com.


Hmong Art

Hmong Art

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 1986

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13:

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Since the 1975 communist takeover of Laos, over 60,000 Hmong refugees have immigrated to the United States from Southeast Asia, bringing with them a rich visual and performing arts heritage. HMONG ART: TRADITION AND CHANGE is the first exhibition and publication to document extensively the textiles, jewelry, musical instruments, and other artifacts currently produced by Hmong folk artists throughout this country.


A History of the Hmong

A History of the Hmong

Author: Thomas S. Vang

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 518

ISBN-13: 1435709322

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This is the first completely up-to-date Hmong history book ever written by a member of the Hmong people. It describes the earliest civilizations of the Hmong and Miao in China, and why some of the Hmong migrated into Southeast Asia in the early 19th century, particularly to Vietnam, Laos and Thailand; and how the Hmong of Laos were involved with the Lao civil war, especially the secret war from 1962 to 1975 that caused almost a hundred thousand Hmong to flee to Thailand and Western countries as political refugees after the Communists takeover. This book includes the forcible repatriation of the Lao-Hmong asylum seekers at Nam Khao refugee camp in Thailand back to Laos in late 2009 and the arrest and discharge of former General Vang Pao by the U.S. authorities. "[It] is full of fascinating materials [and] a wonderful book. Congratulations," commented by Dr Nicholas C. T. Tapp, Senior Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, the Australian National University.


The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

Author: Anne Fadiman

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2012-04-24

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0374533407

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Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, this brilliantly reported and beautifully crafted book explores the clash between a medical center in California and a Laotian refugee family over their care of a child.


An Introduction to Hmong Culture

An Introduction to Hmong Culture

Author: Ya Po Cha

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 0786459883

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Presenting a holistic perspective of the Hmong way of life, this book touches on every aspect of the Hmong culture, including an overview of their history and traditions, relationships between Hmong parents and their children, the rites and traditions of Hmong wedding and funeral ceremonies, the celebration of the Hmong New Year, home restrictions and other superstitious taboos, arts and politics. The book features and explains many Hmong words, phrases and proverbs. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.


Tig, Toog/Hip, Hop

Tig, Toog/Hip, Hop

Author: Catherine Hnatov

Publisher: Star Bright Books

Published: 2012-04

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781595723673

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Playful images of favorite friendly animals hop and splash, tweet and purr in captivating, contrasting black and white illustrations that will engage babies and invite them to look! Now available in Chinese/English.