Music of Native America

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Music of Native America

• MUSI 3721Y
• University of Lethbridge, Calgary Campus
• John Anderson

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Musical Areas

• Localized Native American (American Indian) music
  is classified by stylistic features
  characterizing geographical areas
• The culture area concept, developed and used by
  American anthropologists in the early 20th
  century, was first and most successfully applied
  to the mapping of Native American cultures

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Musical Areas
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Musical Areas

• Anthropologists found that although there were
  1,000 to 2,000 tribal groups, each with its own
  culture and language, they could be grouped into
  six to eight major culture areas distinguished by
  types of housing, religion, political structure,
  etc.
• Scholars of Native American music found that
  musical style areas coincided generally with
  these culture areas

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Questions for Discussion

• Do you believe in a supernatural power or powers?
• Are some people more spiritual than others?

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Questions for Discussion

• Do you dream? Why?

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Questions for Discussion

• How do musicians compose music?
• How would you do it?

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Music and the Supernatural

• Music has supernatural powers in many Native
  American traditions
• Among the Blackfoot, supernatural powers reside
  in songs and are activated when songs are sung
• Songs are not composed but given to humans by
  guardian spirits in dreams or visions

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Music and the Supernatural

• They are thought to exist in the cosmos
• Once they come into worldly existence, songs are
  associated with particular activities
• For example, each object in a medicine bundle has
  its appropriate song
• A person who owns many songs is spiritually
  powerful

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Questions for Discussion

• In your world, what is good music?
• When do you listen to or play music?

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Music as a Reflection of Culture

• Music is measured by its ability to integrate
  society, ceremonies, and social events
• Technical complexity is not a valid criterion
• For the Blackfoot, the right way to do something
  is to sing the right song with it
• Every activity has its appropriate song

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Using Music to Construct Pre-History

• There is virtually no written information about
  the history of Native American music
• at least until about a century ago
• Very little archaeological information
• Songs consisting of short tunes with few pitches
  repeated or varied many times may be a remnant of
  a highly archaic stratum of human music

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Intertribal Styles

• Older intertribal styles include the Ghost Dance
  and Peyote cult
• In recent years, the highly distinctive (and
  stereotypically Indian) Plains musical style
  has been adopted by tribes all over the country
• This applies to costume, too
• New ceremonies (e.g., Calgary Stampede), based on
  traditional midsummer religious ceremonies, are
  becoming more important as symbols of Pan-Indian
  identity

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Sensitivity to Vocal Styles

• Does a vocal style sound tense/relaxed?
  Raspy/smooth? Nasal/round? Is the range
  wide/narrow? Is the contour of the melody
  descending? Undulating? Rising? Does it sound as
  though there is a text or just vocables
  (meaningless syllables)?

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Questions for Discussion

• What words are they singing?
• What is the form or structure? Is there a
  pattern?

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Blackfoot War or Grass Dance Song

• Plains style
• An example of incomplete repetition form
• The singers set up a steady rhythm by beating on
  the edge of their bass drum
• Then, the drums leader sings a phrase in a
  falsetto voice, very tense, harsh, loud, and
  ornamented

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Blackfoot War or Grass Dance Song

• The phrase is repeated by a second singer, and
  the whole group enters, singing a stately melody
  moving down the scale
• Rises again, coming to the end of the song
• Repeates the whole form several times

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Blackfoot War or Grass Dance Song

• Note that the first two stanzas are sung and
  drummed softly, and the tempo, intensity, and
  loudness increase rapidly
• The song has no words, only vocables or
  meaningless syllables, but all of the singers
  sing these in unison
• The overall form of the song could be represented
  as A A B B, with B longer than A.
• B ends with a variation of A, an octave lower

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Creek Stomp Dance Song

• Eastern Style
• A series of songs to accompany a line dance
• The dance leader is the song leader, and the form
  is responsorial
• the leader sings a short call or phrase, and the
  group responds by simply repeating what the
  leader has sung (A), or something to complete his
  phrase (B)
• This call and response is repeated a number of
  times, until a high-pitched call ends the song
  and a new one begins

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Creek Stomp Dance Song

• Ordinarily the first song consists of call on one
  tone, the second expands the range, and others
  provide a slightly more complex melody
• The singers accompany themselves with rattles
• In form, melody, and rhythm the songs tend to
  become increasingly complex
• The singers draw on a stock of traditional
  musical motifs whose content, variations, and
  order they improvise

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Questions for Discussion

• Do you pray?
• If yes, what do you pray for?

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Pawnee Ghost Dance Song The Yellow Star

• Note that each melodic phrase is quite short
• for example, two repetitions of the A phrase
  take only about six seconds to perform
• AA BB CC AA BB
• AA BB CC AA BB CC

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Pawnee Ghost Dance Song The Yellow Star

• Modern music history of Native Americans may be
  said to begin after the great tragedy of the
  massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890
• Resulted in part because Sioux and Arapaho people
  had taken up the practice of the Ghost Dance
  religion
• This messianic cult began in the Great Basin area
  (Utah and Nevada) and was taken up by the Plains
  tribes, who hoped that it would help them in
  combating and defeating the white people,
  bringing back the dead, and restoring the buffalo

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Pawnee Ghost Dance Song The Yellow Star

• As these Plains people learned the Ghost Dance
  ceremony, they learned its songs
• Composed in a simple style that also made them
  think of a simpler, better time
• This style of music, taken up by many
  tribesthus, an intertribal stylewas
  superimposed on the older song traditions

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Kiowa Peyote Song Opening Prayer Song and
Sunrise Song

• You can identify a Peyote song by its wordsor
  rather, meaningless vocables or syllables
  sequences
• Christian texts in English are occasionally used
• The first example uses the syllables
  he-ne-ne-ne-ha-yo-wi-tsi-na-yo
• A line is repeated then replaced by another and
  finally a last one followed by the closing
  formula he-ne-yo-we

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Kiowa Peyote Song Opening Prayer Song and
Sunrise Song

• The second track uses a different and more common
  composition technique
• A line of syllables and an associated rhythmic
  pattern is repeated but each time with a slightly
  different set of pitches, moving down the scale
• he-yo-wa-ne-ne, ka-ya-ti-ni-ka-ya-ti-na-yo
• It presents two stanzas (lines) of the song

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Kiowa Peyote Song Opening Prayer Song and
Sunrise Song

• In the first, the initial phrase is sung only
  once, while the second gives it twice as is
  normal
• Possibly that was a result of the singers not
  having the song totally in mind when he began
• Singers in oral traditions throughout the world
  sometimes begin with a deviation from the norm
  into which they finally settle
• The syllables are a guide to the rhythm
• shorter notes/syllables are combined with hyphens

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Two Modern Powwow Love Songs

• The powwow is an intertribal event that builds
  culture consciousness and sense of ethnic
  identity
• It developed in the later half of the twentieth
  century and is based on Plains music
• A part of the powwow repertory is the body of
  so-called 49er-songs, which may contain
  romantically hilarious words in English

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Two Modern Powwow Love Songs

• Both of these songs alternate nonsense syllable
  verses with English language words
• They are composed in a simple strophic format
• AABC (first excerpt) or AABB (second excerpt)
• typical European song forms as well

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Discussion Questions

• Since a musical system is a reflection of the
  rest of the culture, how is it so in Native
  American cultures?
• Since a musical system is a reflection of the
  rest of the culture, how is it so in African
  cultures?
• Since a musical system is a reflection of the
  rest of the culture, how is it so in Asian
  cultures?
• Since a musical system is a reflection of the
  rest of the culture, how is it so in American
  popular culture?

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Discussion Questions

• How are powwows perceived as the lasting of
  Native of American cultures on one hand, while
  perceived as a reflection of vanished cultures on
  the other?
• Will powwows ever be enough to totally bring back
  older Native American cultures, and how is this
  an adaptation to the outside social environment?