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A silent clapboard church on a barren Arctic landscape is more than just a place of worship: it is a symbol that can evoke fraught reactions to the history of Christian colonization. In the Inuit homeland of Northern Labrador, however, that church is more likely to resonate with the voices of a well-rehearsed choir accompanied by an accomplished string orchestra or spirited brass bands. The Inuit making this music are stewards of a tradition of complex sacred music introduced by Moravian missionaries in the late 1700s – a tradition that, over time, these musicians transformed into a cultural expression genuinely their own.
Called Upstairs is the story of this Labrador Inuit music practice. It is not principally a story of forced adoption but of adaptation, mediation, and agency, exploring the transformation of a colonial artifact into an expression of Inuit aesthetic preference, spirituality, and community identity. Often overlaying the Moravian traditions with defining characteristics drawn from pre-contact expressive culture, Inuit musicians imbued this once-alien music with their own voices. Told through archival documents, oral histories of Inuit musicians, and the music itself, Called Upstairs tracks the emergence of this Labrador Moravian music tradition across two and a half centuries.
Tom Gordon presents a chronicle of Inuit leadership and agency in the face of colonialism through a unique lens. In this time of reconciliation, this story offers a window into Inuit resilience and the power of a culture’s creative expressions.
“Gordon walks a delicate line—between describing the calculated imposition of an ethnocentric, religious worldview by Moravian missionaries, and the development of an expressive agency by Inuit musicians and composers steeped in Moravian hymnody. [Called Upstairs] is informed by extensive ethnographic fieldwork with Labrador Inuit musicians [and] clearly the product of a career’s worth of musicological work. It is as painstakingly researched as it is carefully written. Gordon’s broader argument—that the outcome and revival of this music represent an expressive form of cultural agency—is sound.” Notes
“Called Upstairs is a remarkably thorough, indeed comprehensive, account of Moravian music, its establishment along the Labrador coast in 1764, and its historical development over the next two-and-a-half centuries. Gordon plumbs the depths of the documentary sources completely...Meticulously researched and engagingly written.” Canadian Historical Review