Chapter 2' North AmericaNative America

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Chapter 2. North America/Native America

• Three Different Styles
• Sioux Grass Dance
• Zuni Lullaby
• Iroquois Quiver Dance

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Sioux Grass Dance (CD 13)

• piercing falsetto
• driving drumbeat separate from voice part
• pitches sliding down from high to low
  (portamento) at the ends of phrases
• mixture of solo and group singing
• text is meaningless syllables (vocables)
• repeating, melodic phrases that start on high
  pitches and then gradually descend to lower
  pitches (high to low and back up again).

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Sioux Grass Dance (2)

• singing part.
• Melody
• The melody is ornamented by Form (phrase
  structure) of the Sioux Grass dance.
• Two phrasesA and Brepeat.

4
Sioux Grass Dance - Beat

• It has a steady beat, but does not have a
  regular meter.
• It has a fast tempo. Notice how the drum beat
  does not coincide exactly with the sharp
  emphases, pulsations, and glides
• It accompanies a Sioux war dance.

5
Vocables

• nonlexical or meaningless syllables
• pathogenicarising from emotions
• logogenic where the text is meaningful words.

6
The role of musical instruments

• drums and rattles
• Instrumental ensembles such as the familiar
  orchestras of the Western music-culture are
  unknown in traditional North American Indian
  music.
• In spite of the fact that their music and/or
  language is not written down in symbolic
  notation, what appear to be simpler cultures turn
  out to be very complicated.

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Zuni Lullaby (CD 14)

• Logogenic syllables -- meaningful words
• solo singer
• no drum
• free meter
• repetition
• no harmony
• voice dominates

8
Zuni Lullaby Context

• Grandmother sings a lullaby to her grandchild
• affection shown by repeating phrases comparing
  child to cute, small animals

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Iroquois Quiver Dance (CD 15)

• A solo voice (the leader) sings a text phrase,
  the call.
• a group of voices answers, singing the
  response, yowe hi ye ye!
• This important texture or manner of treating a
  melody is common to many music-cultures
  throughout the world and is known as
  call-and-response.

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Iroquois Quiver Dance

• Male singers only.
• Instrumental accompaniment
• None that is obvious in this older (1942) field
  recording, but it is common for the
  dancers/singers to use rattles to accompany their
  singing.

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Music of the Navajo Indians
12
A Yeibichai Song from the Nightway Ceremony (CD
16)

• Vocalized yells or shouts male falsetto
• Rattle
• With the rattle shaking at end.
• Interweaving of repeating phrases/motives
• Groups (teams) of male voices

13
Yeibichai Song - Religious

• It is part of a nine-night ritual ceremony during
  which masked dancers impersonate the gods to
  bring supernatural power to help cure a sick
  person.
• The person being cured by ritual is the
  one-sung-over

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The Navajo Way of Life

• Navajo are the largest American-Indian tribe.
• The Navajo live on a reservation 25,000 square
  miles in area, located in parts of New Mexico,
  Arizona and Utah
• farming, raising stock, weaving, and
  silversmithing
• Navajo homes range from modern ranch houses to
  one-room houses, with circular floor plans being
  preferred.
• While a lot of traditional Navajo culture
  remains, new ideas have brought much change to
  Navajo life.

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Traditional Popular Music (among the Navajo)

• Ndáá (war dance) songs from Enemyway ceremonies
• recreational pastime
• Couples compete in a new pastime called Song and
  Dance for prizes that are given for their
  costumes and dancing skill.

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The Circle Dance Song Shizhanéé (CD 18)

• Shizhanéé, a Navajo Circle Dance song, is from
  the public part of the Enemyway ceremony known
  collectively as Ndáá songs
• Shizhanéé, is in a compound meter
• repeating groups of very fast threes 123 123 123
  
• syncopationdisplaced accents which stress
  normally unaccented beats.
• The object of the humorous text of the song is to
  make the girls laugh and pay attention to the
  male singers.

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The Classical Music of the Navajos

• The great ceremonial chants
• restore a persons harmony with the world of
  nature
• retell the Navajo creation story
• The Navajo believe that this music is too sacred
  and powerful and could lose its power if recorded
  or misused.

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Navajo Sacred Prayer, CD 19from the
Shootingway

• After a person has been treated for snakebite at
  a hospital, he might undergo the traditional
  Shootingway ceremony to neutralize bad relations
  with the snake people (spirits) that caused the
  snake bite in the first place.

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Frank Mitchell -- Navajo Life

• 1. Repetitive narrative style Repetition is a
  significant element in Navajo art.
• 2. Importance of women Navajos elevate the
  status of women matrilocal, matrilineal families
  are common.
• 3. Traveling about Nomadic lifestyles are still
  common in Navajo culture.

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Frank Mitchell -- Navajo Life

• 4. Navajo practicality Frank Mitchell became a
  singer for practical rather than spiritual
  reasons.
• 5. The value of Navajo songs Music and musicians
  have the power to improve the life of the people
  (healing the sick, for example).
• 6. Speech and leadership The chief in Navajo is
  one who speaks, illustrating the power of the
  voice.
• 7. Navajo humor F. Mitchell was also the beloved
  jokester of his large family.

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Frank Mitchell -- Ceremonial Practitioner

• high status with good job security
• Navajos believe in the power of music to improve
  their lives.
• learned through observing and learning from his
  father-in-law, father, and old people.

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The Native American Church - Influences

• Christian missionary movement
• The Native American Church

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Navajo Peyote Song Hymn (CD 110)

• melody only two note values, one long, the other
  short.
• pitches move in a descending direction.
• rattle/drum accompaniment
• vocables (wordless syllables).
• Syllabic
• ends on the tonic or home pitch similar to the
  Amen in Christian hymns.

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Native American Church - Characteristics

• meets in a large Plains Indian tipi
• the water drum and the rattle
• hospitable to all other religions
• include ideas from other religions in their
  philosophy and ideas.

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Water Drum

• The Navajo water drum is clay pot eight to ten
  inches high filled half full of water and covered
  with a stretched, animal skin drumhead. The drum
  is beat with an unusual drumstick made of a bent
  twig which is tied in a loop at the far end.

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Navajo Inn skip dance

• speaks despairingly of women finding their
  husbands unconscious behind a tall fence.
• makes light of heaving drinking

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The Native-American Flute Revival Origins (CD
114)

• Synthesizer and Native-American Indian flute
• the synthesizer alone
• the Native-American Indian flute enters
• mellow, consonant music that produces a peaceful,
  contemplative mood. Repetition unifies the music.
  The character of the music is floating, lacking
  steady beat/meter or accompanying chord
  progression.

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Carlos Nakai