Music of Native America
MUSI 3721Y
University of Lethbridge, Calgary Campus
John Anderson
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
Musical Areas
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
Questions for Discussion
Do you believe in a supernatural
power or powers?
Are some people more spiritual than
others?
Questions for Discussion
Do you dream? Why?
Questions for Discussion
How do musicians compose music?
How would you do it?
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
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
Questions for Discussion
In your world, what is good music?
When do you listen to or play
music?
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
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
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 PanIndian identity
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)?
Questions for Discussion
What words are they singing?
What is the form or structure? Is
there a pattern?
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 drum’s leader
sings a phrase in a falsetto
voice, very tense, harsh,
loud, and ornamented
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
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
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
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
Questions for Discussion
Do you pray?
If yes, what do you pray for?
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
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
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 tribes—thus, an
intertribal style—was
superimposed on the older song
traditions
Kiowa Peyote Song:
Opening Prayer Song and Sunrise Song
• You can identify a Peyote song
by its words—or 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-witsi-na-yo
• A line is repeated then replaced
by another and finally a last
one followed by the closing
formula he-ne-yo-we
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-tini-ka-ya-ti-na-yo
• It presents two stanzas
(lines) of the song
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
singer’s 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
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 socalled 49er-songs, which
may contain romantically
hilarious words in English
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
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?
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?