Author: nellshawcohen

Appearing on the official arrowhead emblem of the National Park Service and the seal of the Department of the Interior, the American bison (commonly known as the “buffalo”) is this country’s symbol for conservation and national parks. Designated as the first national mammal of the United States, bison also have an iconic cultural importance for America, rooted in their centrality to indigenous peoples and their role in early pioneer culture.

Bison have one of the most successful and controversial narratives of wildlife conservation, steeped in a history of tensions between violence and protection, oppression and collaboration, loss and triumph, and private and public interests. Through the story of the American bison, we find many key thematic threads of the greater American experience.

In “Where the Buffalo Roam,” I sought to create a highly condensed musical narrative depicting moments from the history of the bison in Yellowstone National Park. This piece is built around a quotation from the nostalgic pioneer song, “Home On the Range” (“Oh, give me a home where the Buffalo roam”), which was written in the 1870s by Brewster Higley and popularized by Bing Crosby and Gene Autry, among others. Through my piece, I transform a snippet of this sentimental tune through three sections to evoke a condensed glimpse of the bison’s history.

In the first section, Wild, I utilize glassy sul tasto strings and a quiet, gently rhythmic texture to envision the bison in its prehistoric state: balanced, roaming free, hunted and venerated by the Great Plains tribes. The arrival of homesick pioneers soon gives way to the second section, Hunted: aggressive scalar runs suggest the mass hunting of bison by pioneers and the U.S. Army. The near-extinction of the bison is conveyed by a sudden thinning of texture to a series of soft, eerie chords. Out of this nadir builds Renewed, culminating in a final, full expression of the “Home In the Range” melody. This ending suggests a hopeful vision for bison’s flourishing today in Yellowstone and a future in which we might someday live in balance with wild nature.