.In this article the term ‘Amerindian’ is used in a conventional sense to refer to the native peoples, also known as American Indians or Native Americans, who occupied the North American continent above Mexico before the arrival of the Europeans in the 15th century. (For a general discussion of Amerindians throughout North and South America see Americas and for the music of Amerindian cultures in Central and South America, see Latin America, §I and the relevant country articles.) The Amerindians are so called because of the belief prevalent at the time of Columbus that the Americas were part of the East Indies. The Amerindians appear to have come into the Western hemisphere from Asia in a series of migrations; from Alaska they spread east and south. Their common origin explains the physical characteristics that Amerindians have in common, while the several waves of migration are supposed to account for the many native linguistic families. There is evidence of the presence of Amerindians in the Americas for more than 15,000 years. In pre-Columbian times the Amerindian population of the area north of Mexico is estimated to have been between one and two million.
IV. Developments after European contact
BRUNO NETTL/VICTORIA LINDSAY LEVINE (I; II, 2; III; IV; V, 2), ELAINE KEILLOR (II, 1; V, 1)
In certain respects, Amerindian culture appears homogeneous: its musical styles are broadly similar throughout the continent, as are its myths and religious practices, which show similarities to those of Central and South America. In other respects, however, the Amerindian cultures as they were before the forced moves to reservations may be divided into distinct areas, coinciding with the physical divisions of the continent (fig.1): the Eastern Woodlands (known as Eastern Sedentary in Canada and subdivided into north-east and south-east in the USA), the Plains, the Southwest and California, the Great Basin, the intermountain Plateau (largely in Nevada and Utah), the Northwest Coast and the far North (subdivided into Western Subarctic and Arctic). These areas appear to have developed more or less independently for several centuries: each area had its own political and economic system, largely shaped by the exigencies of the natural environment.
Scholars have identified approximately 1000 tribal units, almost as many languages, and about 60 independent language families in North America. But the boundaries of the language groups did not at all coincide with the boundaries of the cultural areas, which shows that the cultural areas became defined fairly late in Amerindian history. There is substantial evidence that Amerindian cultures were influenced by cultures outside the North American borders. Traits from the cultures of Mexico and Central America, for instance, are found among the Indians of the Southwest, the Southeast and the Northwest Coast; the Amerindians of the far North and the Inuit (Eskimo) share certain traditions with tribal groups of north-east Asia.
Since the 20th century, music has played a special role in Amerindian culture, both underscoring the Amerindians’ ethnic identity and providing a focal-point for their view of their past. Music seems also to have played a significant role in Amerindian cultures before contact with Europeans. In most cultures, it was intimately connected with religion: it was the most important element in worship and in rituals such as the ceremonies of age-grade (peer group) societies and gambling games. Music was also used to accompany social dances, games, calendar rituals and events in the life cycle.
Music evidently symbolized and personalized supernatural power: it was believed that spirits gave this power to human beings by teaching them songs, and individuals who were thought to have a supernatural association had a special relationship with music. As well as being an accompaniment to ceremonies, music was in many instances a form of prayer, and its presence was an important factor in religious experience. Music and performance were judged less by specifically musical criteria than by how well they fulfilled religious and other functions and were effective in providing food, water, healing and so on. Although most Amerindians had relatively simple material cultures and economic systems, each tribe had many varied ceremonies, public and private, which required songs, and Amerindian song repertories often included thousands of items.
Music and dance are closely related in Amerindian cultures. Traditionally, most musical genres accompanied dances performed during communal ceremonies. These dances, many of which persist, are thought to unite members of the community with one another, with the spirits of their ancestors and with supernatural beings. Although each tribe has its distinctive style, Amerindian dances generally move in a circular pattern and feature a dignified style of frontal body movement. Often dance steps, hand gestures and spatial designs have symbolic meaning linked to the ceremony. Depending on performance context and community practice, dance outfits range from everyday attire to intricately detailed costumes, head-dresses and body paint. Often the dancers are also the singers and accompany themselves with hand-held rattles or sound-makers worn on their bodies or sewn on their outfits. The structure of the music usually reflects the structure of the dance. Dancers follow the beat of the rhythmic accompaniment, and the duration of a song is often determined by the time required for all the dancers to complete a full circuit of the dance ground.
Similarly, since most Amerindian poetry is sung, there is a close relationship between the structures of poems and songs. Amerindian song texts often use verbal structures that do not normally occur in the spoken language. One typical example is the Plains tribes’ use of non-lexical syllables, which surround the meaningful text and are interpolated in it. In the Southwest, archaic words or words borrowed from neighbouring tribes are often used in songs. Indeed a great many Amerindian songs have no lexical words at all; in such songs, however, a fixed succession of syllables constitutes the poetic text. This practice is exemplified by Peyote songs, which are used in connection with the Peyote ceremony (see §IV, 2 below) by many Amerindian cultures of the USA. These songs have a distinctive musical style and a repertory of fixed non-lexical syllables and syllable sequences that closely follow the rhythmic patterns of the melodies. The absence of lexical words, particularly in the songs of certain Plains tribes, may be connected with the relative lack of instrumental music; the songs fulfil both vocal and instrumental roles.
The relationship between music and language in Amerindian songs has not yet been fully investigated. There is some indication that syllabic and melodic elements coincide well, though not precisely, and that non-lexical syllables may be used to shift important words of the text to a rhythmically logical position. The Amerindians of the Southwest have elaborate poems set to music, in which the relationship between musical and textual lines is very close. In the Great Basin of Nevada, song forms such as AABBCC are accompanied by precisely the same textual forms. The content of Amerindian song texts varies from simple description of everyday events to symbolic and philosophical statements. However, in some Amerindian cultures, the words and music of a song are not inextricably bound; indeed, new words may be added to an existing melody and a new melody may be composed for an old text.
Formerly, Amerindians had few professional musical specialists or professional training of musicians. Nevertheless, certain individuals in each group were regarded as superior performers or as the originators of music – composers in Western terms. Because of the close association of music with spirituality, the ritual specialist, shaman or medicine man has usually been the person most involved with music.
Traditionally, men have had a more public role in ceremonial life than women, leading earlier scholars to assume that music in Amerindian cultures is a largely male domain. Recent research has challenged that assumption, showing how the development of new performance contexts for traditional repertories has created new performance opportunities for women. Beginning in the 1960s, women have also played a central role in the development of syncretic popular music.
Amerindian attitudes to musical composition contrast with those found in other cultures. Generally speaking, human beings were not considered to be the active originators of music, but rather the recipients of music imparted to the tribe by spirit beings, either through dreams and visitations or, more directly, at the legendary time of the tribe’s origin. Plains tribes, for example, believed that songs could come to a tribe either through its members’ visions or as borrowings from other tribes, although a few songs are traditionally thought to have been with the tribe from its beginning. The Pima, according to George Herzog, seem to think of songs as having an independent existence, and a person to whom a song appears in a dream is said to have ‘unravelled’ the song.
Song learning is accomplished by rote, and the accuracy with which it is done reflects the degree of the culture’s interest in precise reproduction. On the Northwest Coast, for example, and among the Navajo of the Southwest, a single lapse in accuracy of performance may invalidate a ritual, so a fairly stable tradition can be assumed. The Plains tribes, by contrast, do not expect great precision, so that one might expect that their songs have changed substantially over a period of time. The idea of learning songs from human beings is related to that of learning songs from guardian spirits in dreams or visions; in the latter case, a visionary was thought to be able to learn a song in a single hearing, and Amerindians have maintained that they are able to learn a song very rapidly, perhaps after having heard it only once, even where visions are not involved. Rehearsing of songs is found in a few cultures, such as those of the Northwest Coast or Pueblos; generally, however, systematic musicianship is unusual.
Amerindians have developed several different modes of communicating about music, most of which involve gestural and cosmological systems rather than musical notation. However, some tribes have developed graphic notations as mnemonic aids, for example, song-counting sticks of Osage singers, roll-call canes of the Cayuga Condolence Council ritual and Ojibwa birchbark rolls or music boards.
Amerindians believe that the best way to learn and appreciate music is through direct experience, and traditionally most Amerindian singers do not verbalize about music theory. Nevertheless, clearly formed musical thought, values, aesthetics and concepts of musicianship underlie all Amerindian performances, and compositional guidelines as well as details of form and design are articulated by experienced singers. The ability to perceive melodic difference and to distinguish hundreds of songs within a stylistically homogenous and sometimes narrow repertory is highly developed. In repertories of recent origin, such as pan-Indian music (see United States of America, §II, 4(i)), names for sections within a song form and for types of drumbeat are common.
S. Hearne: A Journey from Prince of Wales’s Fort in Hudson’s Bay to the Northern Ocean in the Years 1769, 1770, 1771 and 1772 (London, 1795/R1911)
‘The Catholic Church in the Wilderness’, The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, xxxxi (1868), 238–54
F. Densmore: The American Indians and their Music (New York, 1926, rev. 2/1937)
H.H. Roberts: Musical Areas in Aboriginal North America (New Haven, CT, 1936)
W. Rhodes: ‘North American Indian Music: a Bibliographical Survey of Anthropological Theory’, Notes, x (1952–3), 33–45
B. Nettl: North American Indian Musical Styles (Philadelphia, 1954)
M. Herndon: Native American Music (Norwood, PA, 1980)
R. Keeling, ed.: Women in North American Indian Music: Six Essays (Bloomington, IN, 1989)
C. Heth, ed.: Native American Dance: Ceremonies and Social Traditions (Washington DC, 1992)
I. Goddard, ed.: Languages: Handbook of North American Indians, xvii (Washington DC, 1996)
A.C. Fletcher: The Hako: a Pawnee Ceremony (Washington DC, 1904/R)
G. Herzog: ‘Special Song Types in North American Indian Music’, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Musikwissenschaft, iii (1935), 23–33
G. Herzog: ‘Music in the Thinking of the American Indian’, Peabody Bulletin (May 1938), 8–12
W.N. Fenton and G.P. Kurath: The Iroquois Eagle Dance (Washington DC, 1953)
D.P. McAllester: Enemy Way Music: a Study of Social and Esthetic Values as Seen in Navaho Music (Cambridge, MA, 1954)
W.L. Chafe: Seneca Thanksgiving Rituals (Washington DC, 1961)
B. Nettl: ‘Polyphony in North American Indian Music’, MQ, xlvii (1961), 354–62
B. Nettl: ‘The Songs of Ishi: Musical Style of the Yahi Indians’, MQ, li (1965), 460–77
C.J. Frisbie: Kinaaldá: a Study of the Navajo Girl’s Puberty Ceremony (Middletown, CT, 1967)
G. Clutesi: Potlatch (Sidney, BC, 1969)
T. Vennum: ‘Ojibwa Origin-Migration Songs of the Mitewiwin’, Journal of American Folklore, xci (1978), 753–91
C.J. Frisbie: ‘Vocables in Navajo Ceremonial Music’, EthM, xxiv (1980), 347–92
W.K. Powers: ‘Oglala Song Terminology’, Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, iii/2 (1980), 23–42
T. Vennum: ‘A History of Ojibwa Song Form’, Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, iii/2 (1980), 42–75
C. Mishler: The Crooked Stovepipe: Athapaskan Fiddle Music and Square Dancing in Northeast Alaska and Northwest Canada (Urbana, IL, 1993)
M. Patterson: ‘Native Music in Canada: the Age of the Seventh Fire’, Australian Canadian Studies, xiv/1–2 (1996), 41–54
The value of dividing Amerindian North America into musical areas has been debated by scholars because it depends on static traits, artificial models and generalities. In reality, musical boundaries are fluid and permeable. Indigenous communities have a long history of musical interaction and exchange, often resulting in the adoption or adaptation of instruments, repertories or styles from neighbouring tribes. Since the time of Columbus, borrowing has included aspects of European music. While the area approach provides a helpful overview of Amerindian musics, the music of each individual tribe or community must be experienced more fully in its cultural and historic context.
Amerindian music, §II: Regional survey
(iii) Western Subarctic region.
(vii) Eastern Sedentary region.
Amerindian music, §II, 1: Canada
The indigenous peoples of the area now known as Canada have been and continue to be referred to by labels applied by outsiders to their particular culture, either by another indigenous group or by European settlers and their descendants. The following discussion, however, uses self-assigned terms of individual cultures wherever known and places commonly used labels from the past within brackets. In the oral history of these peoples, their origin is placed within North America, although travel to and from the Asian continent is acknowledged. Today their descendants speak some 55 different languages within several language families, including Inuit-Inupiaq, Algic (Algonquian, Ojibwayan), Nadene, Wakashan, Salishan, Tsimshianic, Plateau Penutian, Siouan-Catawba, Iroquoian plus several isolated languages.
In addition to the diversity of language, the basis of their different traditional economies varied considerably due to the wide variety of terrain and climate within Canada. This, in turn, has produced an assortment of genres and styles for what is commonly referred to as musical expressions, even though not one of the indigenous languages has a word equivalent to the English term ‘music’. Furthermore, indigenous cultures do not strictly distinguish various forms of discourse such as calling, speaking and singing. Instead these forms are experienced as on a continuum ‘from singing, to sing/chanting, to oral reading, to a religious rhetorical style, to “everyday” talk’ (Valentine, p.12). Many public presentations of musical expression are accompanied by dancing, theatrical devices such as acting, use of masks and story-telling. These additional activities and props are closely interrelated with the oral history, economic base and world-view of the culture involved. Dance-floor patterns can be symbolic of the direction of ‘life’ as viewed in a particular area (e.g. Iroquoians go anti-clockwise in a circle while Algonquians and Dene favour a clockwise motion).
Vocal musical expressions have accompanying text. Some cultures will tell an extensive story through this text in their own cultural language (e.g. Inuit pisiit), while other songs will use only a few words of the language concerned. These words or phrases may suggest a number of associations for the singer or listener (e.g. Innu nikamun). Certain texts can consist partially or exclusively of vocables (syllables without specific lexical connotation), as in Dene tea or drum songs. Because of continuing interactions with Europeans and Euro-Canadian settler societies since the 1500s, Latin, French and English words occur in otherwise traditional songs.
Within each culture, the traditional songs are ‘owned’. Many indigenous cultures within Canada traditionally required each young man and woman to spend a period of time in isolation to test their survival skills and to receive a personal song. This personal song was deemed to have been received from a creature of the natural world such as an animal, bird or insect and was carried by that person as a talisman for the remainder of his or her life to be used in times of danger or need. As such, it could not be used by another person unless specifically given as a gift. In cultures such as the Algonquian, songs were thought to be received in dreams. Songs accompanying certain rituals or objects could be inherited or bought, depending on the specific culture and the nature of the particular event involved. Many cultures prized individuals who were able to ‘make’ good songs. In some cases, these individuals would be considered composers in Euro-Canadian terminology and fulfilled the role of creating new songs on request for important events (e.g. potlatch ceremonies) for which payment would be made.
For the purposes of this discussion, broad cultural areas based to a large extent on geographical and economic features of traditional society are used, beginning from the west coast for Amerindians and from the east for the Inuit. Within each area, examples are drawn from usually only one nation and must not be regarded as typical of the whole region.
Most of the terminology used with reference to genres of music consists of terms applied by outside observers. Within each culture, a song’s melody may, depending on the circumstances, belong to several different genres with distinction as to its specific genre dependent in the moment on aspects such as vocal timbre, the number of performers, whether or not there is an accompanying percussive instrument and its type, the rhythmic line used in a multi-part rendition and the occasion.
Amerindian music, §II, 1: Canada
In the Northwest Coast area – a slim strip about 100 miles wide between the Pacific Ocean and the Cascade Range, extending from the panhandle of Alaska to northern California in the USA – the major groups are Comox, Gitxsan, Haida, Haisla (Kitimat), Halq’emeylem, Heiltsuk (Bella Bella), Homalco, Hul’qumi’num, Klahoose, Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwakiutl, Kwagiulth), Nisga’a (Niska, Nishga), Nuu’chah’nulth (Nootka), Nuxalk (Bella Coola), Oweekeno, Sechelt (Shishalh), Sliammon, Squamish, Straits Salish, Tsimshian, Tsleil Waututh (Burrard) and Taku Tlingit. These wood-working peoples lived in large rectangular houses of permanent villages in the winter, but travelled to gather, hunt and fish during the remainder of the year. Although shamans’ songs were used all year round, songs connected with fishing, hunting, love and gambling were used mainly in the warmer weather, while the winter season featured ceremonial music.
In winter ritual complexes, dancing societies re-enacted rhythmic and visionary encounters with supernatural beings. The Kwakiutl (Fort Rupert) of the Kwakwaka’wakw refer to the winter ceremonial complex as the ‘ceqaor cedar bark dance, which had as its centrepiece the hamatsa, a performance to restore to society the young initiates from the land of supernatural beings. The whole performance with its required songs and musical instruments is a microcosm of the Kwakwaka’wakw universe. Certain of the wooden carved rattles used in the performance bear representations of beings referred to in songs and legends and are used at designated points to accompany particular dances and songs. Some idiophones incorporated shells and the hooves of animals. Among other musical instruments are drums, either box-shaped and made out of wood in the carpentered tradition, or with a wooden frame and a skin-head, as well as various kinds of whistles. Multi-tubed whistles could produce two, three or four tones at once. In certain performances to conceal from where the sound was emerging, a whistle could be activated by bellows under the arm.
In connection with a winter ceremonial or a potlatch, welcome, entrance, paddle and farewell songs were performed. The potlatch, a central event of most Northwest Coast cultures, is given by an individual who provides a gift for each guest along with daily entertainments of dance, musical theatre and magnificent feasts that could last as long as a month. During these potlatches given for life-cycle observances, initiation of dancers, name-givings, transfers of title, or memorials, song and dance would delineate the lineages of the persons taking part, the history of the clans and effect a coalescence of the identity of the participants.
The songs of the Kwakiutl belong to three basic types: ceremonial songs, which include totemic crest songs, potlatch songs and songs connected with specific rites such as the hamatsa; love/mourning songs, which centre on themes of pain, longing and sadness; children’s songs, which adults sing to children or children sing among themselves. Ceremonial songs are handed down through generations and thus ‘owned’ by specific individuals or members of one of the four exogamous matrilineal numina (Eagle, Ground Shakers, Noble Ones, Great Ones), which make up the clans (now based in villages). In addition, there are functional songs for certain activities such as those used in the gambling games.
Crest songs and some hamatsa songs are lyrical in nature, but the lyrical love/mourning songs use a falsetto voice and fast vibrato meant to imitate crying. Many ritual and potlatch songs use elevated language and are declamatory, characterized by recitative-like singing, with fixed pitches for each text and no improvisation. The range of most Kwakiutl songs, a major 6th, is wider than other Northwest Coast groups, with some special songs even extending to an octave. The most common intervals used are the minor 2nd and major 3rd, and the predominant melodic movement is undulating with a tendency to move downwards, possibly imitating the cry of a gull. There is a limited number of pitches, often concentrating on a single pitch, but the rhythmic organization is complex with three or four durational values and often varying rhythmic layers. ‘The Kwakiutl’s use of jagged rhythms has been compared to the “steady, yet broken beat of the sea”, an appropriate simile since the tribe is known for its fishing skills and knowledge of the sea. The rhythms … contain a great deal of contrast, including triplets and syncopation as well as repetition. Constant drumbeats precede and underlie but do not strictly coincide with vocal melodies’ (Teskey and Brock, p.42).
Formally songs consist of several sections, some of which may recur (e.g. Introduction AB AC AC' AD AE). The recurring section is often attached to the vocables. Though many patterns are repeated, they are usually varied in melody or rhythm.
Amerindian music, §II, 1: Canada
East of the Rockies the cosmologies of indigenous cultures are based on circular, domical or spherical conception rather than the rectangular cosmos of the Northwest Coast. In the Western Subarctic region, the cultures speak languages of the Nadene and include the tribes of the Dene (meaning ‘people of the barrens’) nation (Chipewyan, Dogrib, Gwich’in, Slavey or Dene-thah, Hare, Mountain, Yellowknives), as well as Han, Kaska, Nat’oot’en (Babine), Sekani, Tahltan, Tanana, Tutchone and Wet’suwet’en (Dakelh, Carrier). Camps were temporary or semi-permanent in nature because of the need to move to wherever the game might be in a climate notable for its short summer and long winter.
Men of wealth and influence were recognized as leaders but held no established position or authority, while women and men gifted with shamanic or medicine powers were highly respected. The Dogrib (Tłįcho), situated between Great Slave and Great Bear lakes, usually led a nomadic existence within a small family group. Consequently, the occasions of meeting with other groups were always marked by dancing and feasting. Between 1769 and 1772 Samuel Hearne observed Dogrib and Chipewyan peoples performing a dance at night to a song with vocables of ‘hee, hee, ho, ho’ and the accompaniment of a drum and sometimes a rattle, ‘made with a piece of dried buffalo hide skin’ (1911, p.318)
During a toghà dagowo, an ‘all night dance’, Dogribs also perform tado‘a t’a dagowo (tea dance) to the music of singing voices without drum accompaniment where men and women, facing inwards, form a circle and move in a clockwise formation. The men tend to use more arm movement and more energetic steps than the side-shuffle used by the women. Many of these songs originated as the dance-song of totemic animals, such as those of Raven, and may also occur in stories related about these animals. The monophonic tune consists of several short phrases, often repeated, with a limited number of pitches in a descending contour.
The whole evening of dance begins and ends with a prayer or prophet song (nadats’e ti zhi). These were made by shamans or medicine persons in the past, but in the mid-19th century came from angels or in dreams to persons regarded as prophets, such as Yats’sule of Tulita and Andrew Dolpheus of Deline. Most songs performed by the group of two to 18 drummers and singers will be a drum dance (eye t’a dagowo) where the dancers move single file in a clockwise circular direction. The couples’ or partners’ dance (lila nats ‘I to t’a dagowo), a ‘lady’s choice’ dance with the man on the outside and the woman on the inside holding hands and moving similarly to the drum dance, was introduced in the 1960s from the Dene-thah. Around this period the line dance or fast partner dance (nake k’e dagowo) appeared. The dancers use a lengthways formation and move forwards and back from one another, performing specific dance-steps to a song accompanied by a double drumbeat. In the mid-1990s another dance was introduced with specific song in which dancers move in a shuffle/hop step that involves the whole body.
Each drummer/singer has a repertory of 50 to several hundred songs, and each group is led and taught by a respected elder. The hand-held, round, single-headed Dogrib drum has two snares across the head to provide specific timbre. (Other groups in this area may have drums with one to three snares located over or under the head.) These drums are also used to accompany the hand game (idzi), a complex guessing game that the Dogribs used at gatherings to settle disputes and to provide recreation on large hunting expeditions for caribou. The teams with up to 20 men per side would alternately hide objects in their hands. The leader of the other team has to indicate by means of stylized hand signals the exact location of the object and in which hand of all eight active playing members of the opposing team it is held. Meanwhile through beating drums and vociferous singing, the team hiding the objects has a supporting group of drummers/singers who try to confuse their opponents’ guesser. Accompanied by drums, the chanting-cry is delivered ‘with wide-open mouth, head thrown back, with strained features by some, and full voice by all’ (Dene Nation, 1984, p.114). A gambling song sung unaccompanied can be used to begin each round of play.
Because the people live in small family groups, dances and songs performed by one or two persons make up a large part of their expressive culture. The ptarmigan dance is a solo dance performed out on the land in which the actions of the bird are imitated. Other personal songs of the Dogrib are divided by them into ets’elá (love songs) and ndè gho’ shi ts’et’i (love of the land songs). Love songs are of two types: one of a teasing nature used to make people laugh; the other of a more personal nature expressing longing or sorrow. The love of the land songs are often sung while performing a work action such as cutting up meat in the barren land. Similarly, the singing of the love songs reconfirms the social values of the Dene whose society is based on respect for the elders.
Musically the Dogribs have a stock of musical gestures that can be used in various ways (e.g. it was acceptable to take the tune of a tea dance-song and put words and vocables to it to make a personal song). Structurally, these songs often use two main phrases in various permutations such as ABB' ABB'or ABA'B'. The resultant contour is normally one that leaps up to a higher point at the opening or begins approximately the interval of a 5th above the resting tone and gradually descends through both gestures using a limited number of pitches. For dance-songs, a pulsating, nasal, vocal quality is desired for projection. A non-nasal, more even vocal quality characterizes the singing of personal songs, lullabies and story-songs.
Amerindian music, §II, 1: Canada
The cultures of the Plateau region live in the mountainous western area where there are sharply demarcated environmental zones – grasslands stopping abruptly at river terraces, montane forests on mountain slopes and at higher elevations alpine meadows. This region has an unusually complex culture of hunter-gatherers operating with private ownership of key resources, hereditary élites and, in pre-European contact times, intense trading, slavery, polygyny, some seasonal sedentary life style and high population densities. There were Salishan-speaking tribes, the Okanagan, the Nlaka’pamux (Ntlakyapamuk, Knife or Thompson), the Secwepemc (Shuswap), and the Stl’atl’imx (Lillooet), the Nadene-speaking Tsilhqot’in (Chilcotin) and the Ktunaxa (Kutenai, Kootenay) speaking the Kootenayan, possibly of the Hokam linguistic group. During the spring, summer and fall they traversed the valleys and mountains by foot, later by horse, gathering roots and berries, fishing and hunting. Bands of kin-related persons worked and travelled together during the warmer seasons and then wintered in fairly permanent locales where the preferred winter dwelling was a pithouse.
During the winter, dancing, feasts, social gatherings, games and story-telling were common. Above-ground lodges were designed for summer use, and people met at summer gathering-places to celebrate the mid-summer solstice with dancing. Each group had various male chiefs, some of whom could inherit the responsibility, with each designated to make certain decisions, only after much consultation, for the community as a whole.
For the Plateau peoples, each thing in nature had a soul and was a being. Therefore, the women who plucked the plants from the earth had to carry out acts of respect similar to the male hunters who killed animals and fished. Prayers, which sometimes involved song, would be offered on each occasion. Song was a central life-tool as the special medium through which these nature-spirits communicated with humans. There were three categories of spirit songs: personal guardian spirit songs and doctoring songs; special songs given to the people by their earliest ancestors; songs given to the people via prophets from the Old One (Wickwire, p.87).
The guardian spirit songs were obtained by each individual during a training period in puberty. A proper dreamlike state was induced by a combination of fasting, running, sweating, swimming and dancing, during which a spiritual being would teach a song to the initiate and advise when to use the song – whether in hunting, fishing, gathering, gambling stick-games, illness or other trouble. To obtain curing powers, longer periods of training in the mountains by particularly sensitive male and female individuals would be undertaken.
During the puberty training, young persons used songs given by their ancient ancestors while dancing around a fire shaking deer-hoof rattles and addressing the dawn of the day. There was also a song used in the sweat-house to request purification, relief from pain and success in hunting. The bear had given the people a mourning song, which was to be sung whenever a bear was killed.
A special mourning song was also used at the birth and rearing of twins. Among the Nlaka’pamux, the father of twins, immediately after their birth, put on a headband, went outside and walked around the house in a circle hitting the ground with a fir-bough and singing the song. A young man was engaged by the parents to sing the song whenever the babies cried, walking around them four times and, during the first month, at least four times a day. Male and female versions of war songs in which prayers were addressed to the sun were used. The men’s version was danced in an anticlockwise circle. Dressed in feathers, paint and full armament, each participant imitated the sounds of his guardian spirit to the accompaniment of drums in imitation of a battle. After the departure of the men on a raid, the women, led by an elder who represented the war chief, similarly painted themselves, wore armaments and carried wooden spears, danced in anticlockwise circles, throwing out the spears and then pulling them back.
Songs given by the Old One, also known as the chief of the Dead or Chief of the Land of Souls, were transmitted by prophets ‘male or female, who had died (visited the spirit-land) and then had been reborn on earth’ (Wickwire, p.92). These appeared to be songs transmitted to the people carrying texts on how to behave in difficult times and supposedly giving added strength through adversities. Other songs were given to use at specific points in the life-cycle, such as the lullaby and songs at death.
Some songs were acknowledged as ‘composed’ by the persons who sang them and are called ‘lyrical songs’ by Teit. They express personal feelings and emotions, such as sadness, nostalgia, sorrow, loneliness, grief, pity, love and happiness. Women in particular composed many of these songs, often during their puberty rituals, and then sang them while digging roots or picking berries. Teit’s ‘going home’ songs were used by groups returning home from expeditions.
The melodies of Plateau songs use predominantly three or four different pitches, with a descending direction through an interval mid-way between a Western tempered major 3rd and 4th occurring most frequently. Teit’s informants enumerated diverse reasons for the words and vocables imbued with meaning that were placed with these pitches. There were words used by the Manitou when the protégé obtained the song; words used by the singer descriptive of the incident of obtaining the song; words descriptive of the appearance and peculiarities of the Manitou; and words descriptive of the Manitou’s powers. There were words describing powers of the protégé’s power; words spoken by the protégé to the Manitou; words in praise of the latter; supplication of the Manitou; and words spoken familiarly or jokingly to the Manitou.
The vocables often imitated the sounds made by animals or birds, such as ‘hwa’ for a bear. The vocable ‘ō’ used in mourning songs is comparable to the English ‘oh!’ or ‘alas’ and when combined with the descending four-note gestures conveys the feeling of crying. In stick-game songs, the gambling game of the Plateau that was somewhat similar to the Dogrib hand game, the vocables ‘ho! ha! hau!’ occur. Structurally two musical phrases recur, AB AB'AB', often being varied to a small degree on repetition.
A few percussion instruments were used as an accompaniment for some songs. Drums were constructed of birch bark or boards, a piece of hide, basket bottoms or bark kettles. Single-headed, handheld drums gradually became more common during the 19th century, and the large double-headed war drum for four to eight players came into general use (c1890) along with an infusion of Plains-style war and circle dances. Sticks were used on occasion to provide a rhythmic line and in stick-games were struck on boards. Rattles often incorporating deer-hooves played a role in certain songs, and in puberty ceremonies deer-hoof rattles were tied around the arms and legs. A rasp, a serrated stick scraped with a bone, accompanied war dances. Flutes made of elderwood, or bone, had specific uses as courting instruments, protection in war and as signal devices.
Amerindian music, §II, 1: Canada
The common feature of the vast Plains area was the dependence of its cultures on the buffalo (prairie bison and wood bison) whose population in 1800 was estimated to be 60 million, but only 40 million by 1830. Its excellent meat and superb hide provided the foundation of the economic survival for the Nadene cultures of Tsuu T’ina (Sarcee, Dunne-za/Beaver), Algic-speaking Nehiyaw (Cree), Anishnaabe (Saulteaux; Plains Ojibwa), Atsina (Gros Ventre), Siksika (Blackfoot), Kainah (Blood), Siouan-Catawba groups of Hidatsa, Nakoda (Sioux Assiniboine, Stoney, Dakota, Nakota, Lakota).
In this region, the Nehiyaw have a larger geographic distribution than any other indigenous Canadian culture. They moved from parkland to grassland following the movements of the bison and other game, which they hunted traditionally with stone-tipped spears and bows and arrows. In summer they travelled by birch canoe and in winter by snow-shoes or toboggan, living in conical or dome shaped lodges known as tipis, clothed in animal skins, and making tools from wood, bone, hide and stone. For most of the year they lived in small bands or hunting groups and gathered into larger groups in the summer for socializing, exchanges and ceremonies. Religious life was based on belief in spirits, which revealed themselves in dreams. Each individual was expected to be responsible for his actions and their consequences. Leaders were selected to direct group hunts and raids, but there was no tradition of inherited leadership.
Father Pierre-Gabriel Marest accompanied Le Moyne d’Iberville in 1694–5 and was the first to write about the Nehiyaw as ‘sprightly, always in motion, always dancing or singing’ (Marest, p.123). The most important occasion for dancing and singing on the Plains was the annual thirst or sun dance, which was usually held around the summer solstice. Preparations for this major event took place during the previous year, such as the ceremonies associated with certain medicine bundles, including the songs for each object contained within, and practice sessions for all of the thirst dance-songs. A leader would select the location for the lodge, and the members of the chicken dance society organized the tipis in a wide circle around the spot. The object of the dance is to pray for rain and to obtain personal strength by participating. The participants go without food or drink for two full days. After the drums have been prepared, the leader blows on his whistle a few short notes to give the order to find a great tree, some six metres high. Young men and women go out to look for the tree, singing songs, and then bring a suitable specimen back to the site. The dance leader, with a rattle in one hand and the wing of an eagle in the other, sings his song three times before the tree is raised at the centre of the lodge site. Then the inner and outer walls of the lodge are built. For the dance the drummers and singers sit in a circle on the north-east side. The dance leader gives a speech and then sings the songs that have been taught to him in a vision by the thunderbird and other spirits, accompanying himself with a rattle. The drums begin at a medium fast tempo and the dancers, each with a whistle in his mouth, must keep perfect time to the beat of the drums. During the dance, the singing and drumming must be kept up continually. At the conclusion, gifts are distributed among the aged and needy, and there is a magnificent feast.
The Plains cultures had various societies to look after certain ceremonies and provide fellowship and entertainment for one another. For the Nehiyaws these include the Prairie Chicken Society, the Buffalo Dance Society, while the male bachelors belonged to a society that did the Cannibal or Witigo dance, in which the participants wore masks. The women had the Elk or Wapiti Society, usually led by an elder.
The men also performed other dances not connected with societies. These included the Horse dance, the Bear dance in which the dancers clad in bear skins danced on their knees, and the Chicken dance, done before sunrise and imitating the actions of the prairie chicken. For the latter, the drummers would gather at the centre of the camp circle, while a leader with a rattle in hand circled the camp imitating the call of the grouse. When a second dancer appeared, the drums would be beaten in a fast tempo and a monotonic ‘He ha ha-ah he ha ha’ would be uttered. Each dancer carried a rattle in his hand and was clad with a robe that he could stretch out to imitate the wings of a bird. Often two dancers would vie with each other in their performances, dancing on their knees, striking their rattles and then rising for a more rapid foot dance. The Tea dance was performed by everyone dancing where he or she stood. It required only a hot beverage to be prepared to be drunk. Gradually in its performance, this pee-tchi–tchi favoured the circle formation of people dancing side by side with the men forming one side and the women the other.
Medicine dances (mitewok) took place during the ‘rutting moon’ and were followed by the Ghost, Give-away and Calumet dances. As part of the medicine dances, persons wishing to join the medical society had to pay a fee of eight articles. The drum used for the medicine dances was ‘made by hollowing out a length of log a foot or more in diameter and about two feet in length. Rawhide is stretched tightly over the open ends’ (Dion, p.49). The low hollow sound created by this drum blended well with the specific chants used during these ceremonies. When properly trained, a shaman could perform the shaking tent or curing rituals using only a rattle called a sisikwanis. During the ritual, this rattle and various voices would be heard with wild beating against the sides of the tent, consisting of four strong posts and rawhide, itself over one metre by one metre and two metres high.
The Ghost or Spirit dance commemorated those who had died and was held during one night only. The dancers, including children and often carrying ‘burdens’ (containing some article of a departed loved one), moved one behind the other in a continual chain while the four singers/drummers sat along the north wall of the dwelling. ‘Each leader of four singers had his own songs; he could use three of these before he called a halt’ and allowed another group of singers/drummers to take over (Dion, p.51).
The Give-away dance lasted for several days and was held in a large round tent with the head man and his wife sitting at its north-west side with a pile of presents. The drummers/singers would begin, and at the end of a song the dance maker would pick out a gift and would approach an individual to the accompaniment of a new song and different drum accompaniment. Before the individual could accept the presents, he would have to dance. The woman would do the same for the females present until five presents had been given away. Feasting would then take place and the ceremony would recommence. This cycle would continue until the gifts began returning back to their original owner.
The Calumet (Peace pipe) dance (oskitchy) belonged to a certain individual for life and was participated in only by the male elders. After a feast provided by the women, the drummers/singers using a slow tempo would provide an accompaniment for the dance owner holding the peace pipe with which he would make two or three rounds. He would then pass the pipe to another person who would have to do a dance before passing the pipe on. After five or six dances, the tobacco was lit and the pipe smoked before the cycle of dances recommenced. At the close all followed the owner of the dance three times around in a circle.
The Nehiyaw regularly held practice sessions using a rattle, rather than drums, to refresh their memories and to teach the specific songs that went with each dance and ceremony. Each person also had personal songs, one of which was obtained as a puberty rite, and others to use for various life rituals. For events in which a group of singers participated, there was a leader who began the song, with the others then joining in, continuing to make a structure of the leader’s introduction A B C, with perhaps another phrase added in a wide ambitus of well over an octave, usually descending from the highest pitch to the resting tone.
Instruments consisted of a variety of drums, most of which were single-headed (fig.2), around 45 cm in diameter, decorated with significant designs that made each one specific for a particular purpose. For instance, there was a particular kind of painted drum used by a midwife among the Anishnaabe. Most drums in the Plains region did not have snares, but certain groups did have some, usually with the snares under the head. A water-drum, hollowed out of a log, was used in the midewiwin (medicine society) ceremonies. For the sun dance, a slight hole was made in the ground and a rawhide stretched over it was struck with willow wands. The grass dance and later powwow dances generally were accompanied with a large, flat double-headed drum suspended horizontally with four stakes in the ground.
Specific kinds of rattles were designed for particular ceremonies. Some consisted of a hollow ball of dried hide with pebbles inside fastened to a stick, while others had a doughnut shape for the Cree war dances and the Siksika All Brave Dog Society. Strips of rawhide to which deer-hooves were attached appeared for the horse dance. Various kinds of rattles could be worn or attached to outfits. The use of whistles has been noted several times, and these were made from the bone of a bird’s wing and contained only one hole. Certain, if not all, of the cultures of the Plains had the end-blown courting flute with block: for the Nehiyaw this was a piece of birch bark, while for other cultures it was often carved in the shape of a bird or horse. Women would blow against the edge of a leaf held between the cupped hands. Buzzers and bullroarers were used as sound-producing instruments. Because the Nehiyaw used bows and arrows for hunting, the principle of the mouth bow had been discovered by them and used to provide both a drone and a melody through manipulating overtones. The Anishnaabe used a rasp, a stick with notches rubbed by another stick.
Amerindian music, §II, 1: Canada
The Eastern Nomadic region covers a large area of eastern Canada featuring the boreal forest, stretching between southern grassland and mixed hardwood trees, north to the tundra. This forest with its interspersed lakes and waterways is the essential underpinning of the Anishnabek (Algic-speaking) indigenous cultures of the region. The particular culture selected is that of the Ojibwa (Anishnawbeg), a group that was initially centred on present-day Sault Ste Marie on Lake Superior. After fishing, hunting and gathering maple and birch tree sap (which was used as a drink, in cooking foods, and boiled down for sweetening), the Ojibwa would offer a paean of gratitude to Kitche Manitou (the Great Spirit).
Each politically independent band had its own chief selected on the basis of hunting or shamanic prowess and hunting territories. For much of the year, a band dispersed into family hunting units and then congregated in larger gatherings during the spring and summer. The society was divided into clans, each identified by a Do-daim, a clan symbol or totem. Children inherited their totem from their father and could not marry a person of the same totem. The elders taught about life through stories, songs, chants and dances. All male children between the ages of 12 and 14 had to undergo a vision process before being accepted as an adult. Although women, because of their gift of being able to give birth, were not obliged to undergo a vigil, they were expected at the onset of menstruation to spend a period of several days away from the camp. The self-revelation or awakening that would come to either men or women was considered personal, not to be disclosed to another.
Those persons who were recognized as having medicine powers had undergone an extensive training period from various teachers in the use of plants and the appropriate songs and paraphernalia for each plant and need. After a deadly disease among the Ojibwa, possibly one of the first scourges brought by Euro-Canadians in the 16th century or the early 17th, the medicine practices were organized into a specialized hierarchical society called the midewiwin (midewewin). ‘No person could apply for membership in the medicine society; instead, the society invited men and women of good character into the fraternity … In all, there were four orders through which the candidate must pass before he gained accreditation’ (Johnston, 1976, p.84). For the first order, the candidate studied with a tutor assigned to him for a year, the names of the plants, their uses, character, quality, songs and the prayers to be rendered for each. If successful, after each level the candidate could add another stripe of paint across his face and would be then recognized as having greater powers.
Because there was a great deal of material to learn and retain as a member of the medicine society, the Ojibwa had a pictographic system of symbols for various parts of ceremonies with a specific symbol for each song, written on scrolls of birch bark as mnemonic aids. In the early 1900s Densmore discovered that if she showed the symbol of a particular song to an informant, she would hear exactly the same song as she had had from another informant hundreds of kilometres distant. Symbols were also used to represent the hunting songs used by the Ojibwa.
Many songs and dances were associated with other important events in Ojibwa society. Each spring the pipe of peace dance had to be performed at least once for the renewal and regeneration of peace. The keeper of the pipe would remove it from its case, perform prayers and chants, offering it skywards, earthwards and to the four cardinal points, then danced it around the central fire. The pipe was then passed to each celebrant in turn to dance with the pipe.
Songs and often dances were used at the important life ceremonies of each individual including: the naming ceremony; the first kill of a boy, where the feast ended with dances representing a hunt or enacting the habits and conduct of game animals; marriage; and the Feast of the Dead held annually in the autumn to honour all who had died during the previous year. At least twice annually, there was a thanksgiving ceremony for the first flow of sap, and before the Ojibwa left for their isolated wintering habitats. Of the two forms of the Festival of the Dog, one included as participants only the warriors, while the second reminded those taking part of famine and survival through dance. For the war dance, the evening before a war party set out, a drum summoned the village to dance. A victory dance was held after a victorious return. Other dances included the deer dance, in which the movements of the dancers imitated the grace and watchfulness of the deer, the snow-shoe dance, the begging dance and the partridge dance. For each of these, there were different movements combined with specific songs accompanied by rattles and/or drums in a particular rhythm and beat.
For the Ojibwa ‘songs were the utterances of the soul. Most were of a personal nature composed by an individual on the occasion of a dream, a moving event, a powerful feeling’ (Johnston, 1976, p.148). Although these songs arrived in dreams or during the puberty fast, they could be used for a variety of purposes ranging from war dances and doctoring moccasin games – the type of Ojibwa gambling game where two pairs of moccasins were used to conceal four objects, one of which was specially marked. The songs were often strophic in nature. The tune might consist of several different sections such as ABCDEwith perhaps a section repeated within the strophe. Towards the end of the 19th century, an incomplete repetition form became more common (e.g. ABCDEB'C'D'E').
The Ojibwa utilized a wide variety of musical instruments. Drums used in the midewiwin included the ‘grandfather’, a water-drum made from a tall, hollow log, and a smaller ‘little boy’ drum whose membrane has seven stones (signifying the seven fires, prophecies or teachings) tying it down, both played with appropriate non-padded beaters. Single-membrane hand-drums that are frequently painted according to designs received in a dream by the maker can be played with either padded or non-padded drumsticks at the distal end. Other double-membrane drums have specific kinds of drumsticks, one of which is made from a loop of cedar branch, for certain ceremonial usage. A particular kind of drum was used for the moccasin game, beaten in a pattern of a strong accented stroke followed by a short, lighter upbeat.
There were disc rattles where skin covers a circular wooden circle that is so made to provide a handle as well, rattles made from fish-skin or other animal/bird parts, and those representing certain totems. Other rattles are associated for use with certain dances while the rattle made of deer-hooves could transmit news from one group to another. Flutes similar to those described for the Plains but with the external block shaped as an animal rather than a bird were used for courting purposes and also in the midewiwin. In addition, whistles and animal callers were utilized.
Because of the wide area encompassed by this region and the number of cultures included, there is considerable variety in the shape, decoration and construction of both rattles and drums. Some drums were quite large, even though played by only one person with snares to which pieces of bone or teeth were fastened across both membranes, such as those of the Innu culture.
Amerindian music, §II, 1: Canada
In the Eastern Sedentary region, agriculture was the basis of the economy, with hunting and fishing as supplementary food resources. In what is now south-western Ontario and a portion of the St Lawrence valley the Wendat (Huron), Petuns (Tobacco), Neutrals and Mohawk cultivated what were known as the three sisters, that is corn, beans and squash, as well as tobacco in pallisaded settlements, with fields surrounding the buildings. They made maple syrup and gathered apples, berries and nuts.
In 1626 the Neutral nation had 28 towns and also ‘several hamlets of seven or eight cabins, built in various parts convenient for fishing, hunting and agriculture’ (Jury, p.3). The Jesuits estimated their population to be around 40,000 or more in 1634. The cabin or longhouse, each of which was constructed with poles bent overhead and lashed with roots and vines to form a rounded roof with the framework covered with bark, could have several families and as many as 200 persons living in it.
Father Bressani praised the Neutrals’ ‘exceedingly acute vision, excellent hearing, an ear for music and a rare sense of smell’ (Jury, p.7). They loved feasts and dances, which were often combined with the games of lacrosse and a winter game that they played with curved sticks, sliding them over the snow to hit a ball of light wood. Their shamans were skilled in the use of herbs and other natural remedies for illness, while the use of the sweat-house with attendant singing was encouraged to prevent illness. There were calendrical ceremonies throughout the year connected with the planting and harvesting of the various crops, while an important ceremony that took place every decade was the Feast of the Dead. Several villages would take part in this elaborate ceremony, which lasted a few days, during which the bones of the dead were placed in a communal burial pit (Jury, p.16). As at the time of death, the women sang lamentations during the ceremony.
By the early 1640s the Neutrals were being devastated by European-brought diseases. In 1650–51 the Neutrals were attacked by the Seneca and Mohawk Iroquois, who destroyed their main villages. Those who survived were taken as captives or managed to scatter to the west and the south to be assimilated into other nations. A somewhat similar fate befell the Wendat, but a small group managed in the 1640s to get to present-day Quebec City, where their descendants live at Lorette. Because of the severe upheavals in their cultural traditions and the strong influence of the French, only sparse information is known about the musical practices of the Wendat in the early contact period.
Certainly the males had an important personal song called adònwe’, which was used for empowerment while hunting, fishing, in council meetings of the chiefs, at feasts and as the last song before death. The singing feast (atouronta ochien) was probably held at different times throughout the year depending on the purpose and occasion. The master of the feast supervised the messengers who were sent out to the other villages with invitations in the form of a bundle of sticks with each stick indicating one person to come, the assistants who prepared the meals and any paraphernalia such as masks and costumes necessary for the ceremonies. The singing feast lasted up to 24 hours and took place in the communal longhouse. Such a singing feast, given by a man who wished to display his goodwill, could have a traditional set of dances to the accompaniment of songs that were usually led by two chiefs, each carrying a tortoiseshell rattle. Chieftainship was organized around the matrilineal clans, but the chiefs earned their rank by virtue of pre-eminence, eloquence, courage and wise conduct and were responsible for any problems, decisions and important affairs that concerned their village, nation or the entire confederacy. Singing feasts were also an important element of the naming of a chief.
The available documentation emphasizes tortoiseshell rattles as an instrument used during singing feasts and also by shamans in medicine ceremonies. Other idiophones indicated are sticks beaten against pieces of bark or, as a substitute, the striking of the fist on the ground. These cultures used the external block courting flute. The 78 traditional Wendat songs recorded by Marius Barbeau in 1911 bear descriptions such as amusement, amusement songs around a kettle, pipe, snake dance, ceremonial song of welcome, canoe, cradle, song in a myth, invitation to dance, dance for women, vision and lyric songs. These titles indicate songs and dances that would have been used with singing feasts, others for life-cycle events and everyday activity.
Structurally the songs have one to three sections, each of which can be repeated with variation. These vary between material largely based on one pitch used in a recitative-like manner and more lyrical sections that are undulating or primarily descending towards the end of the phrase. Some songs are sung at a fast tempo, while others are slow. Often only five or fewer pitches are used and the ambitus is within an octave for each section. Different accompanying patterns can be used in each section, with some having a tremolo-like use of a rattle, while another section can have specific beats, sometimes subdivided. These are characteristics to be found in the musical expression of other Iroquoian groups who settled in south-western Ontario in the 18th century. The membranophone used by these cultures is a water-drum. The water placed within the drum is periodically used to dampen the head for the proper timbre.
Amerindian music, §II, 1: Canada
The area of present-day Newfoundland and the Maritime provinces is the region of longest continuous contact with Europeans. With the archaeological evidence of the Norse settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows site in northern Newfoundland, c1000 ce, the indigenous persons of that area were affected in many ways. The Portuguese Gaspar Corte-Real captured 57 Amerindians, possibly Beothuks in 1501. The only clue about Beothuk musical expressions are the one- and two-holed whistles found in archaeological sites, plus small pebbles and seeds that were probably used in rattles.
From European-brought diseases over half of the Mi’kmaq (Micmac) and Maliseet (Malecite) people had died by 1640. Although there were many similarities between these two cultures, the Maliseet were more of an interior culture and cultivated small plots of corn, while some 90% of the Mi’kmaq diet came from the sea. During the winter they travelled with toboggans employing dogs. According to the season, the size of social groups varied: in winter small groups worked together, while the summer was a period of larger aggregations. Each Mi’kmaq or Maliseet group had a saqamaw/sakomwho was highly respected in the community and a kinap/ginap who looked after defence. Their dwellings, wigwams constructed of birch bark on a pole frame with a fire in the middle of the circle, usually held ten to 12 persons.
The Mi’kmaqs used their songs, rituals and oral traditions to teach their belief system based on the medicine wheel, an ancient symbol representing the four grandfathers, four winds, four directions, four stages of life and the balance of mind, body, heart and spirit. They developed a pictographic system, which seems to have been used to represent words as well. Le Clercq noticed in 1677 that children were making marks with charcoal upon birch bark as he spoke. Perhaps in a manner similar to the midewiwin, the shaman used this system as mnemonic aids for their cures, rituals and songs. The men and women shamans usually carried a medicine bag, in which each object had its particular song. Through pressure from the Jesuits, these were replaced by Christian songs. By 1845 Kauder reported ‘that there is no other song in their language, if you except a few war songs, than ecclesiastic, pious songs’ (1868, p.252).
To accompany their songs, the Mi’kmaq had various rattles made of dew-claws, rawhide or of the basket type. Turtles made into rattles were very special since Turtle was the uncle of Glooscap, their central mythological figure: the 13 plates on his shell represented the lunar year of 13 moons. The Mi’kmaq would beat a piece of bark, tree or kettle for rhythmic accompaniment. Their unique jigmaqn (ji’kmaq’n) is variably described in the literature but constructed today as a kind of slap-stick made from a piece of white ash split into layers along the grain and held together at one end by a leather binding. ‘The player slaps the jigmaqnagainst the palm of one hand to accompany a dance or song’ (Leavitt, p.75). The courting flute figures prominently in their myths.
Amerindian music, §II, 1: Canada
The Arctic area of Canada above the tree-line was inhabited first by Paleo-Eskimos and the Pre-Dorset culture until around 2000 bce. After the Dorset culture became established, a warming trend occurred around 1000 ce and they were gradually replaced by the Thule who developed a very sophisticated technology to hunt sea mammals, including whales. Until c1850 the climate cooled gradually and the people had to make adjustments to survive on locally available foods. This resulted in the different Inuit cultures known today in the Arctic. Although there are some individual differences within groups, the main Inuit cultures have been recognized as from east to west: Ungava (of northern Quebec), Baffin Land, Caribou, Iglulik (Iglulingmiut), Sadlermiut (Padleirmiut), Copper, Netsilik and Inuvialuit (of Yukon and Mackenzie Delta).
In 1888 Franz Boas published the first major monograph on the Inuktitut-speaking peoples within Canada called The Central Eskimo, a product of his travels in 1883–4 to carry out cartographic work on Baffin Island. In this study, he noted the major role of musical expression by describing how the driver of sled dogs makes a certain sound to call his dogs and then sings out to them as he pulls tight on the reins. Boas included a section on poetry and music, where he published 23 transcriptions in Western musical notation drawn from his own experience and four from other sources (Boas, 1964 edn, pp.240–50). This selection details the use of songs in stories (chantefables), personal songs as ‘every man has his own tune and his own song’ (Boas, 1964 edn, p.241) and songs used with games such as playing ball and string games.
Songs
were used in the drum dance with a drum called kilaut and played
sometimes by the drummer with the wrist of the right hand, a bone/antler or
wooden beater, while the male dancer would dance in one spot swaying the upper
body. These songs, often satirical in nature, would have the women singing the
chorus for the performance. The structure of strophes vary in length due to the
different amounts of text used and the neutral syllables of ‘aja’ being
interjected to keep the rhythm and delineate units. Repetition of musical
phrases could be iterative (sectionalized repetition) or reverting (varying
previous melodic material) or in short songs completely through-composed. The
importance of rhythm and text in a language dependent on prefixes and suffixes
also influenced the use of recitative-like passages where words were enunciated
on the same pitch. The melodic contours could be limited to an ambitus of a 2nd
or be as wide as a 10th. The contour itself might have a leap up at the
beginning followed by undulating or plateau materials. A small majority of the
examples tended to have a descending contour for the final phrase. When the
final tone was considered as a tonal centre, the other pitches if five in
number were most frequently arranged in the pentatonic form of A–G–E–D–C.
Another scalar form was approximately E–D–C–B–A–G.
Rasmussen’s observations on the Caribou refer to animal songs and magic songs. The drum dance, which may be performed without a drum, is a major event in autumn and winter. A male dancer, swaying his hips, performs in the middle, while a chorus of women each on one knee surround him. More recently, Pelinski has studied this culture and pointed out the occurrence of multi-part performance of drum songs in parallel 4ths. Two types of co-ordination between song and drumbeat may occur: either the drumbeat remains steady in a 1:1, 1:2 or 1:4 proportion with the beats of the song or the drumbeat gradually increases from a proportion of 1:4 at the beginning to 1:1 at the end. The general principle is that the qatiurtuq (person drumming) should follow the imik(rhythm) of the song. The two styles of beating the kilaut (drum) with the katuk (beater) are the tuqaqpuk (hitting the drum frame perpendicularly with a straight horizontal movement of the katuk) and the anaupaa (using a sliding movement to touch the frame of the drum from below to above).
Among an Iglulik group, Rasmussen found that a drum dance was held to welcome visitors, among other purposes. The drum (kei-is-ou-tik, kittegaru), almost a metre in width, had a caribou skin stretched across a wooden hoop or whale fin and fastened with sinew. Its beater kentoon was about 26 cm long. It was struck on its rims up to 160 strokes per minute. The drummer was also the dancer standing in the middle, knees slightly bent, swaying his upper body in time with the drum. Occasionally the drummer would sing (fig.3), but most songs were sung by the chorus of women led by the dancer’s wife. Each Iglulik man has a song partner whom he challenges with the beauty of his songs. They exchange gifts and wives. The drum dance in a special igloo (qaggi) that can hold around 25 persons can last all night, as long as 16 hours. To prepare for it, men, women and even children would compose songs and carefully practise in their homes. These drum dance-songs are known as pisiq. They are often constructed by putting together several different fragments. Each fragment can consist of two or more phrases, each of which is varied in repetition using from three to five different pitches within an octave. This was the type of song also used in singing duels to settle disputes.
The Iglulik angakpq (shaman) had sakausiq (spirit-songs), which were believed to come from the souls in the Land of the Dead and were therefore the beginning of all song. The shaman used hand-clapping when talking to the spirits. Tivaijok included songs used in the masked dance that resulted in sexual partnerships. Other Iglulik songs were songs in stories, those for children such as lullabies, aqausiq (affectionate song composed for a specific child) and game-songs for hide and seek, string games and juggling. Vocal games (kataksatuk) constituted a large category. There are canonic genres similar to the katajjaq of the Ungava culture and the pirkusirartuq of the Netsilik and Caribou. These are performed by two persons (usually women) or a multiple of two where syllables made up of voiced and unvoiced sounds is repeated. The alternation of breathing in and out of air creates a rhythmic structure that must never be synchronized for each pair. Demanding extensive breath control, the game is won by the person who continues the longest. Other narrative vocal games are distinguished by the syllables and sounds used. Qatipartuq uses the refrain ‘hapapi, hapapi, ha’, while qiarpalik refers to the peritoneum of the seal and the performer must keep her balance while performing certain gestures and lowering and raising herself. Quananau makes and refers to the sound made by a baby being carried in the special hood of the woman’s garment. Both haangahaaqand marmartuq are types somewhat like tongue-twisters. Certain of these games have been documented across the Arctic region.
The Copper used the drum dance to honour members of the family, to express gratitude, to welcome and to say farewell to visitors. These dances were held most often in winter in a structure of two attached igloos to hold some 60 people. Each community had one drum kilaun about a metre across and with a 16 cm handle of poplar attached by sinew. The beater, about 35 cm long, was covered with seal-skin. Both men and women used the drum, which was held above the head and hit on the rim while between sections the drum was lowered and tapped in the middle. The drum represented the ring around the sun and was a good omen. A woman began the dance, while the drummer started the song and a chorus led by the father or the wife joined when they recognized it.
A distinction is made between pisik, where the words must fit exactly with the drumbeat, and the aton, which has a slower tempo and for which a hat and possibly mitts would be worn for the performance. In the latter, the dancer did not beat the drum. Different types of songs were used for the drum dance, including hunting songs and sentimental ones that frequently change tempos. Songs have two parts, which are rarely connected as to text. Dance associates may be male or female, and when a dancer chooses an associate, the associate goes around the circle, rubs noses with the initial dancer and then dances next. Special apparel could be used, including a cap with a loon’s beak since the loon was considered the bird of song. After a drum dance, seances might be held to sing songs to control the weather or to release seals. Visitors could request a session to learn songs that they had heard during the dance. Other instruments are the bullroarer and the buzzer, which children used with their songs. Also different pitches were obtained by flicking the fingernail against the upper teeth.
The Netsilik performed the drum dance at happy times throughout the year in a specially constructed qaggi. The drum kelaudi of wooden hoop, caribou hide with handle was struck by a small wooden club covered with seal-skin. The male dancer who began would wear a cap and gloves while the women’s chorus would keep time with the dancer. Composed by men, women or children while in a solitary place, songs that included riddles were highly valued. The lead dancer would hand the drum to his song partner (iglua) who would dance next. Songs were also used to settle disputes in the drum duel. Each disputant would compose songs to state his case with ridicule and amusement and the community would judge or, if necessary, a wrestling match would take place to settle the dispute. The shaman and magic songs had special words with melodies that had to be sung slowly.
The Mackenzie Delta area has Inuit cultures that include the solo dancing of the east but also has dance forms similar to cultures situated in Alaska. The Inuvialuit square-shaped dance-house kashim was built in the centre of the village and was mainly built underground with an entrance. The drum has a narrow (4 cm) wooden frame covered by a whale-liver or walrus-stomach membrane and a wooden handle. Its beater is a long slender unpadded stick that is used for two different strokes, one lightly touching the underframe and a harder one that strikes both the frame and the membrane simultaneously. For the o’ola-ho’oladance, a group of four or more usually male drummers/singers provide the music. Meanwhile, the dancers, restricted to one gender at a time, wear special gloves and dance out various stories using much more movement than is found in the eastern Inuit cultures.
Amerindian music, §II: Regional survey
(iv) Southwest and California.
Amerindian music, §II, 2: USA.
Amerindian music in the area that now constitutes the USA consists of numerous individual styles, yet there are some common elements. In traditional repertories, the emphasis is on singing rather than instrumental performance. Most of the music is monophonic; singing in octaves by men and women is widespread. In some areas, such as the Eastern Woodlands, singing in antiphony or call-and-response is common; polyphonic singing occurs occasionally. The way in which the voice is used and the preferred tone-colour varies greatly by region. However, because of the immense popularity of powwow music, the most common vocal style is characterized by glottal tension, pulsations on longer notes and high-pitch or falsetto singing. Amerindian music has a wide variety of musical structures, including many strophic and sectional forms. Repetition is important in most Amerindian music; depending on the tribe and genre, repetition may be precise, or involve variation or elaboration. Most Amerindian melodies have a descending contour or undulate with a descending inflection. Phrase lengths are often asymmetrical, which may obscure patterns of repetition or other design elements. Scales are most frequently tetratonic, pentatonic or hexatonic, although other types are used. The most common intervals are major 2nds and minor 3rds and their near equivalents.
Most Amerindian songs are accompanied by percussion instruments, including drums and idiophones (especially rattles). The percussion rhythm is usually a succession of equally spaced beats, although in some areas, such as the Northwest Coast, it has more complex patterns (ex.1). Because most Amerindian music is performed to accompany dances, it usually has regularly recurring patterns of beats and accents, although unmetred song introductions are common in the Eastern Woodlands. Beat patterns within a song tend to change frequently and often involve odd-numbered groupings that create subtle rhythmic complexity. In the Plains region, the drumbeat may not correspond with the melodic beat; the Pueblo people of the Southwest use strongly patterned pauses and some Southeastern genres use one metre in the music and a different metre for the dancing. Aside from these generalizations, each Amerindian group has its own distinctive musical repertories, styles, instruments and performance contexts.
Helen Roberts, Bruno Nettl and others have tried to map the distribution of Amerindian musical styles. The musical culture of the Plateau tribes – principally the Flathead and the Salish – share traits with the cultures of the Plains and the Northwest Coast respectively. The usefulness of these groupings is limited since, of the hundreds of separate cultures, reliable information exists for only about a hundred. Music was collected at different times, and a repertory recorded in the late 19th century cannot be compared with one known only from the 1950s, perhaps changed by intertribal contacts and Western influence. In general, stylistic boundaries tend to coincide with cultural boundaries (though not necessarily with language groupings); the music of a culturally and geographically homogeneous group of tribes also tends to be homogeneous. The greater cultural diversity in the western half of the country (fig.4) is reflected in its greater musical diversity, resulting perhaps from its geographical diversity and isolating effect of the mountain ranges.
Amerindian music, §II, 2: USA.
The best-known regional style is that of the Plains tribes, whose territory extends from the Mississippi river to the Rocky mountains, and from Texas to south-central Canada (see §1(v) above). This region includes such tribes as the Arapaho, Blackfoot, Crow, Omaha, Kiowa, Pawnee and Sioux; the area is shared by some Plateau tribes, notably the Flathead. Plains musical style is characterized by tense, nasal vocal production, with heavy pulsations on sustained tones, especially at phrase endings (in musical transcriptions, this is shown as a row of dots over the sustained note). Typically Plains melodies have a descending contour, often with stepwise progressions known by scholars as ‘terraced descent’. Groups sing in unblended monophony. A variety of scales are used, but the most common types are anhemitonic tetratonic or pentatonic scales (ex.2). Plains song texts are largely or entirely of vocables, non-lexical syllables that are fixed and constitute an integral part of the poetry. Words in song texts are used sparingly and are framed by vocables. Plains drumming is distinguished by an off-the-beat style, the drumstrokes sounding just before or after the melodic beats.
The most common song form of the Plains is a strophic style known by scholars as ‘incomplete repetition’. The strophe is divided into two sections: the first, called the ‘lead’ or ‘push-up’ by Plains musicians, is performed solo by the song leader. The other singers join in to repeat the lead, called the ‘second’. The second is often a variation or expansion of the lead. The lead and second constitute the first section of the strophe. The ‘chorus’, or second section of the strophe, contains two or more phrases sung in unison by the entire ensemble. The chorus is repeated once, completing the strophe (AA' BCD BCD). Ideally, the entire strophe is repeated four times. Plains tribes compose new songs, borrow songs from other groups and also believe songs are given by spirits in dreams or visions.
One of the most important social contexts for the performance of Plains music is the powwow. Other contexts include sacred rituals, ceremonies performed by men’s warrior societies and a variety of more recreational social events. Sacred music from this area includes songs for communal ceremonies such as the Sun dance, ceremonies associated with ritual objects such as pipes or medicine bundles, curing songs and personal songs believed to be received by individuals from guardian spirits. Music associated with warrior societies or men’s age-grade organizations includes songs for the Omaha Hethuska, Pawnee Iruska, Kansa Inloshka and Kiowa Tiah-pah and Black Legs Society. Each of these events had its own distinctive repertory of music and dance, focussed on recounting and honouring historical events and acts of bravery. Many of these societies remain active or have contributed to the development of a relatively new intertribal ceremony called the Gourd dance. Music orientated more towards entertainment includes songs for Owl, Rabbit, Snake, Round, Oklahoma Two-step and ‘Forty-niner’ dances. Each of these dances has its own distinctive musical style and song repertory. Traditional gambling games that involve finding a hidden object are also accompanied by a special song genre.
Amerindian music, §II, 2: USA.
The Eastern Woodlands region extends from the Atlantic ocean to the Mississippi river, and from the Gulf of Mexico to New Brunswick. This area includes peoples of the Southeast, such as the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole and Chickasaw; of the Northeast, such as the Wabanaki, Iroquois and Delaware; and of the western Great Lakes region, such as the Ojibwa and Menominee.
Singers from this region generally use a moderately relaxed and open style of vocal production, although in some communities singers use vocal pulsation to articualte phrase endings and may employ other special techniques such as yodelling, glottal stops and rapid vibrato. Melodic contours tend to descend or undulate with a descending inflection, although certain genres, such as curing songs, have a level contour. Anhemitonic scales with four, five or six pitches are most common.
The most striking feature of Eastern Woodlands music is the widespread use of antiphony or call-and-response in many genres of dance music, a choral style not heard elsewhere. Shouts on indeterminate pitches may be performed to mark the beginning or end of a song. Song texts emphasize vocables, although curing songs and some genres of communal dance-songs also include words. In Eastern Woodlands music percussive accompaniment usually coincides with the melodic beat.
Eastern Woodlands singers use several kinds of iterative, sectional and strophic forms. Songs in iterative form have several brief, repetitive phrases strung together in rapid succession; these occur in genres such as the Stomp dance and Standing Quiver dance-songs. Songs in sectional form, particularly in the south-east, have two or more self-contained sections, each of which is musically and textually distinctive. Strophic forms are most common in animal-dance songs; often the strophe begins with an unmetred introduction, which may by performed solo by the leader. Song leaders express individuality through their choice of repertory and by their improvised variations. Among many peoples in this region, the music of sacred rituals is believed to have been a gift from the Creator at the time of origin; other sources of music include borrowing from neighbouring cultures and individual composition.
Social contexts for Eastern Woodlands music include curing rituals, seasonal thanksgiving and world renewal ceremonies, ritual competitions such as the Ballgame (ex.3), recreational social events and public folkloric demonstrations. In the south-east, Stomp dances are a major musical event among the Cherokee, Muskogean and Yuchi peoples. Stomp dances may be performed as part of the Green Corn (or Busk) ceremony, an elaborate midsummer ritual to honour the deities, give thanks for the corn harvest and repair and renew human social relationships.
Among the Iroquois peoples of the north-east, musical performance centres on longhouse ceremonies associated with the religion founded by the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake in 1799. The most important longhouse event is the annual midwinter ceremony. The rituals of Iroquois medicine societies, such as the False Face (Kakoh’sa) and Husk Face (Gadjisa) societies, also involve extensive musical performance. Social dancing occurs on many occasions among the Iroquois and includes the Standing Quiver (or Stomp) dance.
Amerindian music, §II, 2: USA.
The Southwest region includes New Mexico, Arizona, the northern part of Sonora (Mexico), the southern parts of Utah and Colorado and parts of California. Inhabitants include: the Pueblo Indians (including the Hopi, Zuni, Acoma and Rio Grande Pueblos); the Apache and Navajo (related to other Athapaskan-speaking peoples in western Canada, from where they migrated before 1500); desert-dwelling tribes such as the Yuma, Pima and Papago; and peoples from southern to central California. These groups have had extensive cultural and musical interchange, so that Yuman songs can be found in the Pima repertory and substantial Pueblo influences can be found in Navajo music and ceremony.
Pueblo music features an open, relaxed style of singing that emphasizes the lower part of the vocal range. Melodies are long and complex, and ceremonial songs are performed by large choruses in blended monophony. Pueblo songs have pentatonic, hexatonic and heptatonic scales with intervals of approximately a major 2nd. Song poetry focusses on water imagery, spirit beings and other symbolism associated with horticulture; elaborate lexical texts may be framed by and interspersed with vocables. Pueblo songs are rhythmically complex, with frequent changes of metre, hemiola and patterned pauses. Ceremonial songs are generally composed in five sections, each with several phrases of music and poetry articulated by introductory and cadential formulae. The form (AABBA) is integrated with the choreography of the dance. A traditional composition method of the Pueblos involves a process of collective revision. The composer creates a song, which is revealed to a performing group during preparation for a ceremony; members of the group modify the song as they learn it and further adapt the song for performance in other settings.
Social contexts for Pueblo music include seasonal communal ceremonies for preparing, planting and harvesting crops. These ceremonies include kachina dances (with masked representations of ancestral spirits), maskless kachina dances, dances to honour game animals and corn dances that are sometimes connected to Catholic feast-day observances. Other Pueblo genres include lullabies, songs for healing, story-telling, corn-grinding (ex.4) and gambling games. Some eastern Pueblos also perform the matachinas, a Spanish-derived dance ritual accompanied by fiddle and guitar.
Navajo and Apache singers cultivate a tense, nasal vocal style emphasizing the upper or middle vocal ranges, with occasional use of falsetto. Group songs are performed in unblended monophony. A variety of scale types and melodic contours are used, depending on the song genre. The content and structure of southern Athapaskan song poems vary by genre, but vocables are combined with words in most songs. Most Apache songs have a strophic form that alternates verse and chorus; the verse may be sung in a parlando style on one or two pitches, in contrast with free-ranging melody of the chorus. Navajo music uses strophic forms as well as a variety of sectional forms with intricate phrase designs and interwoven motifs (ex.5).
The most important contexts for traditional Athapaskan music are life-cycle rituals and curing ceremonies. Among the Apache the girls’ puberty ceremony is the central musical event. During this four-day ceremony, long song cycles tell the story of White Painted Woman, the source of fertility and creator of human beings in the Apache origin narrative. The Navajo perform curing ceremonies to restore balance and harmony within the person who is ill. These curing ceremonies re-enact episodes from the Navajo creation story and may include hundreds of songs performed over several days. Other southern Athapaskan genres include social dances and moccasin game-songs.
The third style of the Southwest belongs to speakers of the Yuman language family, shared with some of the small tribal groups in southern and central California such as the Luiseño, Diegueño, Cahuilla and Yokuts. Their musical style is characterized by relaxed vocal production, undulating melodic contour and pentatonic and heptatonic scales. Many songs have a special sectional form known as the ‘rise’, a melodic unit (phrase or several phrases) repeated several times, occasionally interrupted by a slightly higher-pitched melody (AAAAB AAB AB AAAB AAB; ‘B’ is the rise; ex.6). During the rise, the dancers raise their hands. In this area, major contexts for musical performance include epic stories, mourning rituals, puberty ceremonies and gambling games.
Amerindian music, §II, 2: USA.
The Great Basin region ranges from the eastern slopes of the Rocky mountains to the Sierra Nevada and the Cascade range, and from the Colorado river basin to the Fraser river. Peoples include the Washo, Ute, Paiute and Shoshone. Great Basin singers use a relaxed, open vocal quality, emphasizing the middle range; they perform subtle melodic ornamentation through special breathing techniques, such as aspirated attacks and releases. Great Basin songs typically have tetratonic or pentatonic scales, using major 2nds and minor 3rds. The melodies are short with a narrow range and tend to undulate, sometimes with a descending inflection. Historically, communal dance-songs were performed monophonically and, unlike most Amerindian dance-songs, were not accompanied by percussion instruments. Great Basin song texts may be composed entirely of vocables or a mixture of vocables and words. However, story-telling songs from this region have long, detailed lexical texts, and songs from seasonal ceremonials involve a subtle, evocative imagery. Great Basin songs have a variety of iterative and strophic forms. Most seasonal round dances have a paired-phrase structure (ex.7), single, consecutive repetitions of each phrase in such combinations as AABB or AABBCC. The Great Basin style was the basis of the widespread Ghost dance style, which diffused throughout the Plains in the late 19th century.
The most important social contexts for the performance of traditional Great Basin music include life-cycle rituals such as birth, naming and puberty ceremonies, shamanistic curing rituals, mourning rites, hand games, story-telling and seasonal first-fruits celebrations, such as the Paiute Round dance or the Ute Bear dance. Another genre from this region is the ‘song recitative’, sacred narratives in which each animal character has its own distinctive melodic and rhythmic style.
Amerindian music, §II: Regional survey
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Amerindians have a great variety of instruments, most of them confined to a percussive role. The main melodic instruments are flutes; other melody-producing instruments, now known only from descriptions in the ethnographic literature, appear to have served mainly as drones. In some cases, instruments are used purely for their tone-colour; sometimes they imitate sounds of nature (e.g. animal cries and birdcalls) or suggest the voices of supernatural beings. Instruments of indeterminate pitch are often associated with ceremony and ritual, often as a background to singing. An example is the bullroarer, whose non-melodic sonorities serve both to accompany singing and to mesmerize when they help to induce the shaman’s state of trance.
The most widespread Amerindian instruments are those that vibrate when struck, shaken, rubbed or plucked. Among the simplest are those that are rhythmically struck with sticks: boxes and poles have been used for this purpose on the Northwest Coast and by the Salish tribes; bark idiophones are found among the tribes of the north-east; baskets have been used similarly by the Yuma and Apache tribes of the Southwest and in southern California; and turtle shells were once important rhythmic instruments in southern Mexico. Among the Plains Indians, a suspended piece of unmounted hide (technically a membranophone, not an idiophone) was beaten by several singers simultaneously; one might well regard this as an ancestor of the drum. Finally, the ‘foot drum’, a plank or log rhythmically stamped upon, was known in California, the extreme Southwest and possibly also on the Northwest Coast.
Among the more complex idiophones, the log drum was evidently diffused from central Mexico to cultures on the West Coast of North America; in a simplified form (without a slit), it became an important instrument of the Northwest Coast tribes.
The most frequently used idiophone was the rattle, which still exists in innumerable forms; most prominent is the container rattle (fig.5), essentially a handle and a closed container holding pebbles or seeds. Most, if not all, Amerindian cultures had some form of container rattle, but the materials used varied from area to area, and the different ceremonial uses in each tribe gave rise to a great regional variety of decoration. Many Amerindian rattles are art objects as well as sound-producing instruments.
The most widespread containers were gourds (found throughout the USA, but particularly in the eastern half of the country) and leather spheres sewn from rawhide (used in the Plains). Basket rattles were used on the West Coast, coconuts in parts of the south-east and cocoons in California. Turtle shells were used for container rattles in the Eastern Woodlands and the Southwest and horn in isolated spots throughout the country. After the coming of Europeans and the introduction of metal, bells of the cascabel type (e.g. sleigh bells) came to be used as container rattles among some Apache groups and have since spread to other tribes, where they are sometimes worn on ceremonial costumes, enhancing the dance with rhythmic jingles.
The other important rattle, particularly in the west, is the suspension type, consisting of a series of perforated objects that are strung together and shaken. Among the objects used are deer-hooves (particularly in the Great Basin area of Nevada and Utah), rattles taken from rattlesnakes (in the Southeast and California), bird beaks, bones and animal claws (on the Northwest Coast), animal shells (by the Pueblo of the Southwest) and, in more recent times, metal (in many different areas).
Finally, there are split-stick clappers, played in California and on the Northwest Coast, and the rasp, a notched stick placed on a basket or an inverted piece of pottery for resonance and scraped with another stick. The rasp is used in the Great Basin, the Plains and in the area round the Gulf of Mexico.
Membranophones are, with idiophones, the only type of instrument widely used by Amerindians. Most widespread is the single-headed frame drum (sometimes erroneously called ‘tambourine’), held in one hand and struck with the other (fig.3). Its one skin is attached to a frame typically about 30–60 cm in diameter, with four thongs (or sets of thongs) tied on the opposite side from the skin into a massive knot that is used as a handle for the instrument. This type of drum is found in the vast majority of Amerindian cultures; the only important exception appears to be the California culture area.
Double-headed drums are found aboriginally in only a few places: isolated spots in the Great Lakes area, the Gulf Coast, the Great Basin and New England. They may be of recent origin, influenced by European bass and snare drums. In any event, drums with two heads, particularly large drums capable of being beaten by several players, have become widespread throughout the eastern two-thirds of the USA during the 20th century.
Small kettledrums, held and beaten by one player, are found in much of the USA, from the East Coast to the Plains. In the Plains area, they are filled with water to permit tuning and to effect a distinct sonority. The Plains Indians appear to have adopted the kettledrum only recently (in the 19th and early 20th centuries) and use it only for the Peyote ritual (see §IV, 2 below).
Throughout the USA, drums are generally beaten with wooden sticks whose ends are sometimes padded with rawhide. The beating of drums with hands or fingers has been relatively uncommon and is restricted to a few tribes in the Great Basin and California.
The only chordophone used by the Amerindians before their first contact with Europeans was the musical bow, though the presence of even this simple instrument is not substantially documented: its existence is inferred only from reports, and hardly anything is known of its music. The musical bow occurred only in the Southwest, California and (sporadically) the Great Basin. In most cases, it appears to have been a simple hunting bow, occasionally adapted to musical use. Among the Apache it was fitted with a resonator, and in California bows were sometimes built specifically for music. Information about the music produced on the musical bow can be inferred from the music of certain Indian tribes in South America, where it has been used as a solo instrument or to accompany singing, normally with a range of two or three notes within an interval of a 4th. Related to the musical bow is the kízh kízh díhí, also called the ‘Navajo violin’ or ‘Apache fiddle’ (fig.6).
The most important melodic instrument is the flute, found in many different forms over much of the country, but especially in the west and south. Flutes are almost always solo instruments, though in some cultures, such as that of the Plains, the flute repertory appears to have consisted largely of music that could also be sung.
The most important materials used to make flutes have been wood, cane or bark. Pottery flutes have been sporadically used in the Southwest, and bone flutes on the Northwest Coast, in California and on the Plains. The number of finger-holes in flutes has varied from three to six. The majority of Amerindian flutes are end-blown, but there are also duct flutes, in which a hole is drilled into the side of the flute, a plug inserted and the hole partly covered by a separate, often elaborately sculpted piece of wood that is tied to the instrument. Occasionally (in the Great Basin and among the Salish-speaking tribes of the plateau of Washington and Idaho), side-blown flutes have been used and nose flutes appear to have been known in the Great Basin. Single-note bone and wood whistles were widely used, for musical and ritual purposes, in the west; in California, they were sometimes tied together in groups to form panpipes.
Multi-tubed whistle flutes are also found in the Northwest Coast cultures. Bone flutes, either without finger-holes or having up to six, were used as a courting instrument in Plateau cultures and have also been located in archaeological sites in Newfoundland. Whistles made out of quills or goose feathers had ceremonial uses in the Inuit cultures of Baker Lake and the Mackenzie Delta. The willow flute, with from one to six finger-holes, occurred in cultures as widely separated as the Mi’kmaq (Mi’kmaw; Micmac), Nlaka’pamux (Thompson), Caribou Inuit and the Slavey. The most distinctive type is the vertical whistle flute with a sliding external block and gasket to cover the tone-hole. In Canada this instrument was used by Eastern woodlands groups, both nomadic and sedentary, in the Northern Plains, the Plateau and some of the Northwest Coast cultures. It uses a whistle mechanism to produce the sound, with the ‘block’ (also referred to as saddle, bird or rider) forming the windway for the air located on the outside of the flute. In length and diameter it may vary from 34·3 to 84 cm and 2 to 5 cm (Conlon, 34). Its mouth end may be blunt, tapered or a small tube. Many examples are beautifully carved from wood and decorated with leather, beading, feathers etc. Usually there are six open finger-holes but both the literature and examples found in museums indicate that these varied from four to seven holes. The ideal flute was one that produced a full, vibrating sound when all of the holes were closed. Its main use was as a courting instrument by young men but it could also be used for signalling in wars.
Reeds have occasionally been used for producing sound, and there have been trumpets of various sorts – gourd, shell, wood and bark. Little is known about these instruments, but they appear to have been used ceremonially and to have played only single notes.
The bullroarer consists of a flat piece of bone or wood with serrated edges, which is attached to a string or rawhide thong and whirled rapidly through the air. It has been used most widely in the west, extending eastwards into the Plains. Shamans used the bullroarer when seeking to control the weather (as in the Great Basin area of Nevada and Utah) or to invoke a trance; sometimes it was a signal for the assembly of the tribe, and in recent times it has been a toy. A similar instrument, the bone buzzer, consists of a rounded piece of bone with holes; two pieces of twined string are attached and as they are pulled apart the buzzer rotates rapidly, producing a low, whining sound.
D.H. Whitbread: ‘The Eskimo Violin’, The Canadian Forum, xxxiii (1953), 82–3
P. Conlon: The Flute of the Canadian Amerindian: an Analysis of the Vertical Whistle Flute with External Block and Its Music (diss., Carleton U., 1983)
E. Keillor: ‘Les tambours des Athapascans du Nord’, Recherches amérindiennes au Québec, xv/4 (1985), 43–52
B. Diamond, S. Cronk and F. Von Rosen: Visions of Sound: Musical Instruments of First Nations Communities in Northeastern America (Waterloo, 1994)
Amerindian musics, like all other musical traditions, have continually changed, reflecting native concepts of history and underlying attitudes towards change itself. Many groups believe that history proceeds along a recursive spiralling path rather than a linear chronology. Therefore, Amerindians tend to adapt historic repertories to new social realities, blending older styles with fresh components and merging the genres of one community with those of another. Western influence has sometimes resulted in more abrupt musical change. Entire tribes were obliterated through disease and war brought by contact with Europeans. Conversion to Christianity and the Westernization of native social and economic patterns prompted the adoption of new repertories and the creation of new performance contexts. During the 20th century, tourism played a significant role in the development of Amerindian music and dance. Through adaptation, blending and merging, Amerindians have selected European musical values, styles and instruments to enrich and diversify their own traditions.
The first substantial contact that the Amerindians had with European music occurred in the Southwest as early as the 16th century. Little is known of the effect of these first contacts on the Amerindians’ musical life. One description tells of an early 17th-century incident in which friars taught the Pueblo Indians to sing and to play instruments. A Navajo chief came to visit the Santa Clara Pueblo, and the friars, who wished to convert him to Christianity, had bells rung and trumpets and shawms played, which evidently impressed him greatly.
Throughout the continent, the teaching of Western church music to Amerindians was a major missionary activity. Nevertheless, Amerindians usually kept their knowledge of Western music separate from their traditional music. They did not develop the kinds of mixed styles that arose in Africa, in black cultures of the New World, in India and in the Middle East. This stylistic separatism is probably due to the great differences between the Amerindian styles and those of the European music known to them.
The greatest degree of integration occurred in the Southwest, where Spanish became a common language. The Pueblo have many rituals of Hispanic origin that exist side by side with their Amerindian traditions. An example is the Tewa Pueblo matachines dance described by Kurath and Garcia, which has acquired a respected place in Pueblo ceremonial repertories and is performed around Christmas. Some of the tunes are European in origin, with guitar and rattle accompaniment, but some are probably of Amerindian origin. Pueblo music, with its variety of scales and melodic forms, evidently lent itself better to the creation of mixed styles than did other North American styles.
It is thought that contact with Europeans may have given rise to the kízh kízh díhí used by the Navajo and the Apache in the Southwest (fig.6), which is a combination of the musical bow and a string instrument. It consists of a length of century-plant stalk 45 to 60 cm long and 7 to 10 cm in diameter, along which is stretched a single string of horsehair supported by bridges and tuned by a peg (examples with two strings are also known). It is played with a simple horsehair bow. Its repertory consists of songs in the traditional Apache and Navajo styles but occasionally includes Westernized tunes, which can also be performed vocally.
The peyote cactus, whose buttons are chewed for hallucinogenic effect, was the basis of a religious cult in central Mexico several centuries ago. By the early 18th century, the cult had penetrated to the south-western USA, where it was practised by the Apache. After that time, it spread to many tribes, particularly those of the Plains and the west, bringing with it a special religious cult and a peculiar musical style. By the middle of the 20th century the Peyote religion – officially the Native American Church, with headquarters in Washington, DC – was the most important religious movement among Amerindians (fig.7), and Peyote music perhaps their most prominent musical style.
Peyote meetings consist largely of singing, and Peyote songs may be sung outside the religious context. The tenor of the religion is conciliation with non-Amerindians and it has Christian overtones. The rapid spread of the religion has given many tribes a new musical style and repertory, which have accompanied or sometimes supplanted older traditions. This religious and musical phenomenon is primarily a result of modernization, arising from the greater need for mutual support and friendly contact among Amerindians facing the problems resulting from Westernization.
The style of Peyote music probably derives from Apache and Navajo styles. It has long tunes made up of short phrases, frequently using a single main rhythmic motif and closing with a standardized final formula (ex.8). The form is frequently the incomplete repetition form of the Plains. The melodic contour may be undulating or descending in the terraced fashion common in Plains music. The singing style is more relaxed and gentler in tone than Plains singing and, indeed, is different from all other known Amerindian singing styles. The tempo is quick, and the accompaniment uses a gourd rattle and a small kettledrum partly filled with water. The texts are frequently non-lexical but use characteristic configurations of syllables such as ‘he yo wi ci na yo’ or ‘he ne yo wi ci ne’. Such syllabic combinations are employed by all Amerindian tribes using the Peyote ceremony and are thought by each tribe to have originated in another. Occasionally words in the Amerindian vernacular are used and sometimes English words with Christian content as well.
In contrast with the Peyote religion, which has a history of several centuries and finally became a movement of reconciliation with non-Amerindians, the Ghost dance was cultivated for only a short time, representing a final attempt by some Amerindians to rid themselves of the effects of Westernization. Like the Peyote religion, its practice became an intertribal movement and gave rise to a peculiar musical style that was adopted by various tribes and provided diversification.
The Ghost dance began in 1870 among the Paiute of western Nevada and spread rapidly during the 1880s, particularly among the Sioux, culminating in the ‘Sioux Outbreak’ of 1890, after which it was outlawed. The musical style that accompanied it was derived from that of the Great Basin of Nevada, whence the movement came, and consisted of relatively simple songs with a small melodic range and a characteristic form in which each phrase was repeated (e.g. AABB, AABBCC or AABBCCAABB). The phrases are short and unequal, and the singing style relatively tense and pulsating. In contrast to the Peyote religion, which was still flourishing in the mid-20th century and for which many songs were being composed, the Ghost dance survives largely in the memory of older individuals, and new songs have not been added to the repertory. The style is found mostly in Plains Indian repertories; the Ute Indian song (see ex.7 above) also shows the characteristics of the Ghost dance style.
In addition to the development of Christian hymnody and pan-tribal styles such as the Ghost dance and Peyote music, Amerindians have adopted styles and repertories from other American ethnic groups. Many tribes have developed fiddle traditions based on those introduced by their European neighbours in the 18th and 19th centuries. Native composers and performers participate in the full range of popular idioms, including rock and roll, folk rock, jazz, gospel and country and western music.
Bands such as Xit write song lyrics that comment on current sociopolitical concerns and issues, or reflect the realities of contemporary Amerindian life. Some individual performers, including Buffy Sainte-Marie and Jim Pepper, have achieved widespread popularity in the mainstream of American music. The group Ulali has explored inter-ethnic musical and historical connections through native south-eastern song genres with lyrics in English and performed with African-American vocal harmonies. Finally, the Plains courting flute has become a musical icon of the New Age movement through the success of composer/performers such as Carlos Nakai.
In the 19th century, some Amerindians began to compose in European genres using European notation. Thomas Commuck (1805–55), of the Narragansett tribe, wrote and published a collection of 120 hymns for the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1845. More recent native composers include Jack Kilpatrick (Cherokee), Louis Ballard (Cherokee-Quapaw) and Brent Michael Davids (Mohican). Davids, who has received international acclaim, has had commissions from the Joffrey Ballet, the Kronos Quartet and the National Symphony Orchestra. His works reflect images and concepts from contemporary Amerindian life, incorporating Amerindian musical instruments and instruments of his own design into the European symphony orchestra, string quartet and other ensembles.
J. Mooney: The Ghost-Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890 (Washington DC, 1896, 2/1965)
D.P. McAllester: Peyote Music (New York, 1949)
W.K. Powers: ‘Contemporary Oglala Music and Dance: Pan-Indianism versus Pan-Tetonism’, EthM, xii (1968), 352–72
N. Ware: ‘Survival and Change in Pima Indian Music’, EthM, xiv (1970), 100–13
C.J. Frisbie and D.P. McAllester, eds.: Navajo Blessingway Singer: the Autobiography of Frank Mitchell, 1881–1967 (Tucson, AZ, 1978)
B. Diamond-Cavanagh: ‘Christian Hymns in Eastern Woodlands Communities: Performance Contexts’, Musical Repercussions of 1492, ed. C.E. Robertson (Washington, DC, 1992)
E. Keillor: ‘The Emergence of Postcolonial Musical Expression of Aboriginal Peoples within Canada’, Cultural Studies, ix/1 (1995), 106–24
The music and musical culture of the Amerindians have been studied since the late 19th century, and extensive collections of recordings have been deposited at various archives – notably in the Library of Congress (Washington, DC), the Archives of Traditional Music, Indiana University (Bloomington), and the National Museum of Canada (Ottawa).
Recording of indigenous music began with cylinders made by Franz Boas (of Plateau and Northwest Coast material) and Alexander Cringan (Iroquois) in the 1890s. At this time, a policy of assimilation was being pursued by the Canadian government which had banned the potlatch and religious rituals of Northwest Coast Amerindians in 1884 and the sun or thirst dances of the Plains area in 1895. These prohibitions remained in effect until 1951. Consequently there was an urgency with many projects undertaken in the 20th century to record songs that would be otherwise irrevocably lost. Hundreds of songs were recorded, but often without full exploration or documentation of context or informants, or a translation of the texts being obtained. Subsequently some of these recordings were released commercially without receiving clearance from the nation concerned or from the particular owners of the songs. In many cases some of these songs should only be heard traditionally by certain persons and in particular situations. As a result of this misuse of their musical heritage, many indigenous nations within Canada during the 1980s drew up guidelines on what may be recorded, released commercially and used for demonstration purposes by outsiders of the culture. Emphasis is being placed on preparing videos, making recordings and preparing courses of studies including traditional music to be used in schools, but these are normally restricted for use within the territory of the nation. This direction has encouraged indigenous elders and students to research and write about their own musical traditions. With the commencement of the new territory of Nunavut (official languages Inuktitut, Inuinnaqtun, English and French) and the western territory (official languages North Slavey, South Slavey, Nehiyaw; (Cree), Chipewyan, Dogrib, Gwich’in, English, French and Inuvialuktun) of the former Northwest Territories beginning in 1999, preparation of such materials is increasing dramatically.
A careful reading of existing written documentation and oral accounts by indigenous persons verifies that traditional music has constantly undergone some change. Those changes often became more dramatic through contact with other cultures, particularly that of Euro-Canadian settlers. Christian missionaries soon realized the attraction of their sacred music for the indigenous peoples. Nehiyaws using a hymn to calm turbulent waters, Mi’kmaqs and Mohawks using hymns instead of traditional dirges for wakes, Iroquois gathering to sing hymns at a house-party rather than traditional social songs, a Dene drummer performing a ‘prayer song’ modelled on the traditional medicine song within a mass, or the Innu praying in a country tent by singing hymns turned outwards to the tent wall beyond which the spirits are encircled, all indicate that Christian hymnody is functioning in a manner parallel to the musics of indigenous parent cultures.
The Canadian government gave responsibility for the schooling of indigenous peoples largely to church organizations. The music of the church according to the denomination responsible was reinforced in these usually residential schools. To support the assimilationist governmental policy, use of indigenous languages and traditional music was banned, while many schools had bands, and instruction in string and keyboard instruments to perform European-derived compositions.
Involvement with Euro-Canadian music increased rapidly in the 20th century through better transportation systems and the media including recording devices, radio and television. Today Canadians of indigenous heritages are working in a wide variety of musical styles depending on what musical influences and kinds of education they have had. (For a brief overview of their contributions to concert music and fiddle music, contemporary popular musics, see Canada, §II, 4.).
Amerindian music has been much studied by American scholars because the groups have been readily accessible and because most Amerindians have, for several generations, been able to speak English. Other causes have been the growth of American musical nationalism during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the growing interest of Americans in the cultures of minority groups.
Scholars have published transcriptions of Amerindian songs in Western notation, comparative studies covering the entire continent, monographs on individual tribal styles and investigations of special historical and theoretical topics. Among the most enterprising and distinguished have been Frances Densmore, who recorded, transcribed, and published songs of many tribes for the Bureau of American Ethnology; Alice C. Fletcher, Theodore Baker and Benjamin Ives Gilman, who were early pioneers in this field; Willard Rhodes, who made large numbers of recordings and published a number of studies; David P. McAllester, whose interest has been confined largely to music of the Southwest, especially the Navajo tribe; Gertrude P. Kurath, whose contributions have been mainly in the area of Amerindian dance; Helen H. Roberts, who published the first monograph relating the musical styles to different geographical areas; George Herzog, who used the methodology of the Berlin ethnomusicologists E.M. von Hornbostel and Carl Stumpf in several studies of individual Amerindian tribes; Alan P. Merriam, who in his monograph on the music of the Flathead tribe gave equal attention to the anthropological and structural aspects of their music; and Bruno Nettl, whose work on Blackfoot music and ritual drew on ethnohistory and mythology as well as contemporary fieldwork. Nettl is also known for his contributions to mapping the musical areas of the Amerindians (1954). The ethnomusicologists Hornbostel, Stumpf, and Otto Abraham and the anthropologist Franz Boas, though their main work lay elsewhere, also made important contributions to the study of American Indian music.
Scholars of the next generation include Charlotte Frisbie, who has focussed on the Navajo; Leanne Hinton, who has studied Havasupai music and language; William Powers, Orin Hatton and Tara Browner, who have emphasized the Plains region; Thomas Vennum, whose work centres on the Ojibwa; Richard Keeling, who has focussed on northern California; Judith Vander, who has studied Shoshone music and the ghost dance; Charlotte Heth, Marcia Herndon, David Draper and Victoria Levine, who have focussed on the Southeastern region; Richard Haefer and Brenda Romero, whose work emphasizes the Southwest; and Virginia Giglio, who has worked with southern Cheyenne singers.
While 20th-century Amerindian music is fairly well-known, scholars have only recently begun to develop methods to research its earlier history. Some tribes used graphic notations, but these were not widespread, and tended to convey information about song texts, and their number and sequence in ceremonies, rather than melodies or rhythm. Archaeology has not contributed greatly to music research as most Amerindian musical instruments were made from natural materials subject to deterioration. Scholars interested in historical processes have worked with ethnohistorical materials, sacred narratives and oral history, combined with what is known of the movements of tribes and the geographic distribution of stylistic features. Therefore, most scholars have concentrated on the period since 1890 when sound recording began; many historic and contemporary recordings are available commercially from the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Culture, Smithsonian/Folkways Recordings, Indian House and Canyon Records.
G. Herzog: Research in Primitive and Folk Music in the United States (Washington DC, 1936)
J. Hickerson: Annotated Bibliography of North American Indian Music North of Mexico (diss., Indiana U., 1961)
A. Briegleb, ed.: Directory of Ethnomusicological Sound Recording Collections in the U.S. and Canada (Ann Arbor, n.d. [1971])
R. Stevenson: ‘English Sources for Indian Music until 1882’, EthM, xvii (1973), 399–442
R. Stevenson: ‘Written Sources for Indian Music until 1882’, EthM, xvii (1973), 1–40
M. Maguire: American Indian and Eskimo Music: a Selected Bibliography through 1981 (Washington DC, 1983)
E. Brady: The Federal Cylinder Project … a Guide to Field Cylinder Collections in Federal Agencies (Washington DC, 1984)
R. Keeling: North American Indian Music: a Guide to Published Sources and Selected Recordings (New York, 1997)
Apache Music of the American Indian, Library of Congress AFS L42
Love Songs of the Lakota, Indian House IH 4315
Songs of the Arizona Apache, Canyon 705
Songs of the Sioux, Library of Congress AAFS L23 (1951)
Songs and Dances of the Flathead Indians, Folkways P445 (1953)
The Eskimos of Hudson Bay and Alaska, Folkways FE 4444 (1954)
Indian Music of the Pacific Northwest Coast, coll. I. Halpern, Folkways FE 4523 (1967)
Sioux Favorites, Canyon 6059 (1968)
Iroquois Social Dance Songs, Iroqrafts QC 727, 728, 729 (1969)
Pueblo Indian Songs from San Juan, Canyon 6065 (1969)
Cloud Dance Songs of San Juan Pueblo, Indian House IH 1102 (1972)
Crow Celebration: Ten Great Drums at Crow Fair, Canyon 6089 (1973)
Music of the Alaskan Kutchin Indians, Folkways FE 4253 (1974)
Songs from the Blood Reserve, perf. Kai-Spai Singers, Canyon 6133 (1975)
Songs of Earth, Water, Fire and Sky, New World NW 80246 (1976)
Songs of the White Mountain Apache, Canyon 6165 (1977)
Stomp-Dance, 1–4, Indian House IH 3003, 3004, 3005, 3006 (1978)
Oku Shareh: Turtle Dance Songs of the San Juan Pueblo, New World NW 80301 (1979)
Seneca Social Dance Music, coel. M.F. Riemer, Folkways FE 4072 (1980)
Songs of the Sioux, perf. Ironwood Singers, Indian House IH 4321 (1980)
Songs and Dances of the Eastern Indians from Medicine Spring and Allegazy, New World NW 80337 (1985)
Powwow Songs: Music of the Plains Indians, New World NW 80343 (1986)
Canada jeux vocaux des Inuit, coll. P. Toureille, Ocora HM 83 (1989) [incl. notes by J.-J. Nattiez]
Honor the Earth Powwow: Songs of the Great Lake Indians, Rykodisc RCD 10199 (1991)
The Best Cree Fiddle Players of James Bay, coll. M. McGee, Ozone HB01CD (1993)
The Best of Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre, var. perf., SICC (1993) [incl. notes by K. Parker]
Inuit Iglulik, coll. A. Simon, Museum Collection Berlin CD 19 (1993) [incl. notes by J.-J. Nattiez]
Songs of the Inuit, coll. S. Fujimoto, JVC VICG-5333 (1993) [incl. notes by A. Ebato]
Creation’s Journey: Native American Music, Smithsonian/Folkways 40410 (1994)
Still the Eagle Flies, SICC-CD95 (c1994) [incl. notes by K. Parker]
24 Canadian Aboriginal Artists, coll. N. Michaels, Sunshine Records SSCD-4253 (1995)
American Warriors: Songs for Indian Veterans, Rykodisc RCD 10370 (1997)
World Sounds: Songs of the Inuit II, coll. S. Fujimoto, JVC VICG-5460-2 (1998)
