Comments on: You Have Been Listening to an M.I.A. Broadcast: “Indian Lore for the Vanguards,” 1933 http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2011/03/18/you-have-been-listening-to-an-m-i-a-broadcast-%e2%80%9cindian-lore-for-the-vanguards%e2%80%9d-1933/ Where our past is never very long ago Sat, 25 May 2013 06:15:15 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Ardis E. Parshall http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2011/03/18/you-have-been-listening-to-an-m-i-a-broadcast-%e2%80%9cindian-lore-for-the-vanguards%e2%80%9d-1933/comment-page-1/#comment-53142 Ardis E. Parshall Sun, 20 Mar 2011 03:19:49 +0000 http://www.keepapitchinin.org/?p=10819#comment-53142 You just never can guess what connections are going to be made here! This obituary for Horace Pratt Beesley, the mission president, says he was an accomplished musician — particularly in flute and piccolo! — and puts him in Salt Lake at the right time to have participated in this broadcast. He would have been 10 or 15 years too old to have been a Vanguard, but nothing in the program suggests that all the performers were in fact Vanguards.

I think we have a winner.

]]> By: Clark http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2011/03/18/you-have-been-listening-to-an-m-i-a-broadcast-%e2%80%9cindian-lore-for-the-vanguards%e2%80%9d-1933/comment-page-1/#comment-53136 Clark Sun, 20 Mar 2011 02:54:46 +0000 http://www.keepapitchinin.org/?p=10819#comment-53136 I’d be curious to find out if the Horace Beesley that played the flute solo on this program was the same Horace Beesley that presided over my father’s mission to Central Germany in the late 1960s.

]]> By: Ardis E. Parshall http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2011/03/18/you-have-been-listening-to-an-m-i-a-broadcast-%e2%80%9cindian-lore-for-the-vanguards%e2%80%9d-1933/comment-page-1/#comment-52909 Ardis E. Parshall Fri, 18 Mar 2011 18:26:42 +0000 http://www.keepapitchinin.org/?p=10819#comment-52909 Thanks for that, kevinf. Reading this today sounds so alien to everything I know or think I know intellectually, yet at the same time it feels so familiar on some other level. This takes me right back to my childhood and dressing up as an Indian for Halloween, or making “feather” headdresses out of construction paper in first grade.

This radio program is a real time machine, capturing as it does the real words and attitudes of an earlier generation.

]]> By: kevinf http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2011/03/18/you-have-been-listening-to-an-m-i-a-broadcast-%e2%80%9cindian-lore-for-the-vanguards%e2%80%9d-1933/comment-page-1/#comment-52908 kevinf Fri, 18 Mar 2011 18:22:36 +0000 http://www.keepapitchinin.org/?p=10819#comment-52908 I always enjoy reading these transcripts of the old church radio programs. I recently read Jared Farmer’s On Zion’s Mount about the history of the relations between Mormon settlers and the Utes who lived in Utah Valley. It speaks at length about our fascination with Indian lore, and the image of the Noble Savage. It also talks about how the whole idea of feeding the Indians instead of fighting them came about after we discovered fighting them wasn’t really all that helpful.

For all that Farmer’s book might be a bubble-burster, it does give us a better perspective on the actual contributions of the Native American people who actually lived in Utah when the Mormons first arrived. And it really helps put in perspective how the entire nation had a fascination during the earlier parts of the 20th century with Native American legends and lore. This program is a real representation of the culture of the times.

]]>