What Pilgrims Heard When They Arrived in America

For both the English settlers who landed at Plymouth Rock, and the Native Americans who met them, their first meetings introduced an entirely new soundscape. But with the passage of time, many of those sounds were lost—especially as the religious traditions that were so important to colonists and indigenous peoples changed or died out. So it was even more meaningful when an audience in Washington, D.C., gathered to hear the sacred sounds of both English colonists and New England’s indigenous Wampanoag people earlier this month.

“Waking the Ancestors: Recovering the Lost Sacred Sounds of Colonial America,” was no ordinary living history program. Performed by educators from Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the program was developed as part of the Smithsonian’s Religion in America initiative.

Just as calls to prayer and church bells are part of city life around the world, the religious lives of America’s indigenous people and colonists had their own distinctive sounds. “Waking the Ancestors” explored just what those sounds might have been like. With the help of meticulous historical research, the team behind the program reconstructed how worship traditions sounded after the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620 in what is now Massachusetts.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/documentary-theater-program-brings-back-sacred-sounds-pilgrims-and-native-americans-180961164/