Native American Music By Lexie Buchanan

Music Areas Plains Eastern United States Yuman(Southwest States and parts of Southern California) Athabascan(Navajo/Apache; also Southwestern U.S) Pueblo(Southwestern United States) Great Basin(Nevada/Utah) Northwestern coast(Oregon, Washington and some places in Alaska)

Powwow A tribal or intertribal gathering in twentieth-century Native American culture, a principal venue for performance of traditional and modernized music and dance Members sit in a circle, facing each other and sing Intertribal- songs or dances based on the Plains styles with which traditions of various other tribes are combined, developed for performances at modern powwows

Older Ceremonial Traditions Peyote – each singer must sing four songs at a time and only at four points during the ceremony must the songs be sung Yeibechai also known as the Night Chant of the Navajo- a curing ceremony that requires nine days and nights, which include over 100 songs and some poetry Hako- a Pawnee ceremony of general religious significance that also includes over 100 songs

Diversity in Native American Music Potlatch- a ceremony once common among the peoples of the North Pacific Coast, held to exhibit wealth, family status and important events Monophonic- referring to music compromising a single melody, without chords or other harmonic and melodic parts Music Area-a group of Native American tribes who share similar musical styles, roughly corresponding o the cultural areas but not the language

3 Idea’s About Music Oral tradition places limitations on complexity of materials to be remembered There is a lot of complexity at a microscopic level than the listener may at first perceive The idea of technical complexity as never been a criterion of musical quality to Native American peoples

Musical Instruments Plains Indian hand drum Northwest Coast Indian drum Blackfoot ceremonial objects: Medicine bundle rattles, gambling bones Flute-most widespread instrument ranging from true end-blown flutes to duct flutes, which are similar to European recorders Majority of instruments are percussion instruments

History of Native American music Ghost Dance- the modern music history of Native Americans may have began after the great tragedy of the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. This started because Sioux and Arapaho people had began the Ghost Dance religion. Typical Ghost Dance consists of a few short phrases and each phrase is repeated This style of music, taken up by many tribes-thus, an intertribal style – was superimposed by much older song traditions