It is a new year of teaching piano. Involved with this is helping students find repertoire for upcoming competitions. One national music organization that focusses on American composers (hurray!) released a new compendium of eligible works for the next four years of competitions. I’ve been going through the listed works, which vary from very early to very advanced musical repertoire.

I am struck that in the Primary levels there are at least two “native American inspired” tunes that cause me to question if it is appropriate to assign these works to my students: The Swinging Sioux by William Gillock, and Apache Braves by Dennis Alexander. Both of these composers are very-well respected. Still, I’m a bit surprised to see these in the repertoire list, particularly after all that has come to our attention in the last decade or two. Both of these works use various stereotypes we’ve come to associate with children’s “Indian” music, and which have little to nothing to do with First American culture.