Mysterious Poverty Point: A Song History

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"Mysterious Poverty Point" is the eleventh of the sixteen tunes in DulciFlute, a book of duets for mountain dulcimer and Native American flute by John Keane and Karen Keane, published by Fingers Of Steel.[1] According to the listing, every piece in the book is an original composition, written out in notation for the flute and in chords for the dulcimer, and the download comes with the authors' own recording of each one.[1] No composer is named for individual tunes, so the listing leaves open which of the Keanes wrote this one.[1] The Keanes are Shreveport, Louisiana, musicians and longtime teachers who studied music education at Northeast Louisiana University, now the University of Louisiana-Monroe, and they have written several books and CDs of dulcimer-and-flute music.[2][3]

Etching of a rounded earthen mound among tall trees and undergrowth

Alphonse Legros, Tumulus gaulois, etching, c. 1857–1911. An old earthen mound shown for its subject; it is not Poverty Point and has no connection to the tune.

Poverty Point itself is an ancient earthwork complex in West Carroll Parish, in northeastern Louisiana, set on the eastern edge of Macon Ridge in the Lower Mississippi Valley.[4][5] Its builders were hunter-fisher-gatherers, who raised five mounds and six nested, semi-elliptical earthen ridges bordering a large central plaza; the dominant mound, known as Mound A, ranks among the largest earthen mounds built in North America.[4][5] Sources differ on its age: UNESCO dates the earthworks to between 3700 and 3100 BP (years before present), the National Park Service gives 1700 to 1100 B.C.E., and Britannica says a settlement flourished there from about 1700 to 700 BCE.[4][5][6] Researchers cited by the Park Service estimate that around 53 million cubic feet of soil went into the mounds and ridges, and the site is named after a 19th-century plantation in the vicinity.[5]

Federal recognition came in two steps, with National Historic Landmark status in 1962 and authorization as a national monument in 1988, and Louisiana manages the site as a state park.[5][6] The World Heritage Committee added it to the World Heritage List on June 22, 2014, during the committee's 38th session in Doha, Qatar, making it the 1,001st property on the list.[7] The sources consulted here do not say what led the Keanes to the site or to the word "mysterious" in the title.[1][2][3]

Our book that contains the song "Mysterious Poverty Point"

Sources

  1. Fingers Of Steel: "John Keane And Karen Keane, DulciFlute".
  2. DulcimerDownloads: "John Keane".
  3. DulcimerDownloads: "Karen Keane".
  4. UNESCO World Heritage Centre: "Monumental Earthworks of Poverty Point".
  5. National Park Service: "Monumental Earthworks of Poverty Point: World Heritage Site".
  6. Britannica: "Poverty Point National Monument".
  7. National Park Service: "Basic Information - Poverty Point National Monument".
  8. Image: Alphonse Legros, Tumulus gaulois, etching, c. 1857–1911. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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