2001 Qilloowawya, "Hitting the Rawhide": Serenade Songs from the Nez Perce Music Archive.(Book Review)

Edited by Loran Olsen. Northwest Interpretive Association (909 1st Ave., Ste. 630, Seattle, WA 98104-3627), 2001. 38 pp., $19.95.

This thirty-eight-page booklet with CD, containing thirty-six Nez Perce song selections, supporting information, musical notation, translations and photographs, is a gift from the Nez Perce past. Beginning with the earliest wax cylinder recordings, recorded examples of Serenade Songs are followed through the 1970s, illustrating the persistence and importance of this significant oral tradition.

The booklet is intended for anyone with interest in learning about this particular song tradition of the Nez Perce, but it will have particular value for ethnomusicologists whose focus is North American Indian studies.

Qilloowawya means "Hitting the Rawhide," and it refers to the songs that accompanied a once-significant activity no longer seen, heard or experienced in Nez Perce land.

Included in the booklet are ten characteristics of qilloowawya, as represented in its most important model, the song Inim hama; sources for qilloowawya; the connection with Flathead Indian "Canvas Dance"; the form of one model song; the function, or uses, of qilloowawya in the culture; Great Basin and Plains examples; some useful questions for discussion or to ponder; twentieth-century usages or developments; brief information about the CD selections; selected notated ...