‘Forbidden Music’ explores complex preservation of B.C. Indigenous culture – Vernon Morning Star
September 22, 2023
Film documents 1950s efforts to preserve music threatened by potlatch ban, residential schools
A documentary exploring the complex relationship between a 20th-century European academic and efforts to preserve North Island Indigenous music and culture has wrapped up filming.
Forbidden Music, a feature-length documentary for Knowledge Network, explores Indigenous music rights and ownership, and how Kwakwaka’wakw Chief Mungo Martin worked to protect 123 traditional First Nations songs from disappearing through government assimilation tactics.
The Acimow Media documentary by producer and director Barbara Todd Hager, her fourth, recently finished 16 days of filming in Austria, Canada and the United States.
The documentary tells the story of Austrian-born Jewish ethnomusicologist Dr. Ida Halpern and artist and singer Martin worked together to record songs threatened by the potlatch ban and the cultural threat caused by the removal of Indigenous children to residential schools.
