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Music and the Mennonite Ethnic Imagination

McCabe Juhnke, Austin
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1523973344572562

Abstract Details

2018, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Music.
This dissertation examines the connections between musical aesthetics and processes of ethnoracial identification in the music-making practices of American Mennonites during the twentieth century. In the United States, white Mennonites formulated identities based on the idea that they were a people “in the world, but not of it.” Nevertheless, across the twentieth century, they became increasingly integrated into dominant patterns of American life. At the same time, influenced by the American missionary movement, Mennonites established domestic mission projects, attracting black and Latina/o members to the church for the first time. For white Mennonites, music became an opportunity to construct ideas about, and experiences of, a Mennonite ethnoreligious identity during the twentieth century. In the context of post-World-War-II Mennonite anxieties about American modernity, the Mennonite Church’s Music Committee viewed unaccompanied congregational hymn singing in four-part harmony as a “historically authentic” Mennonite practice in need of preservation. Even though gospel songs had become common within many Mennonite congregations, the committee hoped to decrease the use of these songs, viewing them as “alien” to Mennonite tradition with dangerous “popular and emotional” associations. The Committee’s work culminated in the 1969 Mennonite Hymnal, which presented particular genres as markers of a Mennonite singing heritage. Songs from Harmonia Sacra came from the influential nineteenth-century American Mennonite tune book publisher Joseph Funk; translations of German chorales represented Mennonites’ pre-English past; and translations of texts from the Ausbund, a sixteenth-century Anabaptist song collection, connected a heritage of Mennonite singing heritage to Reformation-era European origins. Mennonites of color, however, did not see themselves within a Mennonite ethnoreligious narrative tracing to Europe, and the Committee’s rejection of “overly emotional” musical styles paralleled longstanding white anxieties about “black” aesthetic influences. Latina/o and black Mennonites brought with them new musical aesthetics and a critique of a Mennonite identity defined by European-Anabaptist roots. Inspired by the radical identity politics of the late 1960s, black and brown Mennonite leaders began demanding a voice in Mennonite institutional conversations. In this context, performances by choirs from “minority” churches became a way to make ethnically marginalized individuals visible to the broader church. Beginning in 1971, the Latina/o Lawndale Choir and the Mennonaires, a black gospel choir, frequently appeared at Mennonite conferences, allowing Mennonite institutions to put diversity on display. Yet their music went beyond a politics of ethnic recognition. In embracing a musical aesthetics that was open, engaged, experiential, and embodied, the music of the Lawndale Choir and the Mennonaires critiqued the dominant Mennonite aesthetics in which singing was idealized as a cerebral expression of a historically rooted European-Anabaptist Mennonite identity.
Danielle Fosler-Lussier, PhD (Advisor)
Ryan Skinner, PhD (Committee Member)
Theresa Delgadillo, PhD (Committee Member)
221 p.
Aesthetics; African Americans; American Studies; Ethnic Studies; Hispanic Americans; Music; Religion; Religious Congregations; Religious History
Mennonites; identity; church music; race; ethnicity; religion; acoustemology; hymns;

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • McCabe Juhnke, A. (2018). Music and the Mennonite Ethnic Imagination [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1523973344572562

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • McCabe Juhnke, Austin. Music and the Mennonite Ethnic Imagination. 2018. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1523973344572562.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • McCabe Juhnke, Austin. "Music and the Mennonite Ethnic Imagination." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1523973344572562

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1523973344572562
946
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.