Introduction

Listen to the song and watch the video of Buffy Sainte Marie’s “Starwalker.” Read the Lyrics of “Starwalker.”

Which musical sounds are familiar? Which sounds seem unusual? Take a moment and describe what sounds different about them. Now read the lyrics to the song using this link. Does this song tell a story you’re familiar with? Does it express ideas similar to the ideas expressed in the songs you listen to? What is different in the lyrics from the songs you normally hear?

If you have ever been to a powwow, you might recognize the sounds of Native American powwow singing throughout “Starwalker.”

If you have not been to a pow wow, the background vocals in this performance might sound unusual for rock. They might sound a bit out of place with the electric guitar, bass, and rock drum set. This song, like everything Buffy Sainte Marie performs is contemporary Native American music which often mixes mainstream contemporary sounds with musical elements particular to Indigenous American cultures.

This chapter begins a unit on several Native American musical styles. This chapter (Chapter 3) presents a broad overview of native North American cultural and musical traits. Chapter 4 discusses Navajo music and culture, while Chapter 5 discusses Cherokee music and culture. The unit concludes with a chapter on inter-tribal music, (i.e., music shared by all Native American nations but not culturally specific to any).

Native Americans Today

Although the United States is one political country, it contains many cultures. Nowhere is this most apparent than in the abundance of indigenous cultures. More than 5 million Native Americans live in the US in 574 federally recognized tribes.

An easy place to see the great diversity of cultural traits present in Native Americans are in the variety of words used to talk about themselves. The government uses the word “tribe” to identify an ethnic group like Navajo or Cherokee, while many natives prefer the word “nation”: Navajo Nation and Cherokee Nation. Some accept the phrase “American Indian,” and some find it offensive, because it originates in a mistake the early European explorers made when they arrived in the New World. Some prefer the phrase “Native American” and others use the word “indigenous,” while others prefer “American Originals” or “Original Americans.” Some people refer to themselves as members of the “First Nations” or “First Nation People.” What is common is that the indigenous Nation to which the person belongs is a primary part of their identity.

As suggested in the Prologue, people from different cultures have different lived experiences. The best way to hear about people’s own experiences are from the people themselves.

Many native nations publish their own newspapers, and there are several that are written for a broad audience, including Indian Country Today, Native News Online, and Native America Today. Social media platforms like YouTube also allow Native Americans to publish their own stories. Below are links to some videos in which some Native Americans discuss their lives. As you listen to these, think about how their lived experiences compared to yours. What elements are different? What elements are the same?

Musical Variety

The songs of First Nations are as varied as that of all music in the United States mainstream culture, and many also have unique qualities. Click on this Spotify link to go to a playlist that contains just a few songs in some of the myriad common, contemporary native styles. Some music sounds completely different than what most of us have ever heard, while some music by Native artists sounds just like any other American commercial song heard on the radio, be it country, rock or hip hop. Some compositions mix musical elements unique to Native American music with those of classical music like a string orchestra or a piano.

Many Native artists mix the unique sounds together with rock, hip hop, or other types of mainstream popular types of music. There are typical pop music love songs, but there are also love songs to the land, nature, and the environment. Some songs are sections of dramatic rendering of longer stories, just like an aria (song) from a European Opera or American Broadway Musical. Many songs can be performed any time any where, while some music carries meaning only when it is connected to specific circumstances. Some songs can be played for everybody, while other songs can only be played by cultural insiders. Some types of music can be performed by both men and women, while other types can only be performed by men or by women. Much of this music is vital to maintaining a specific identity in the face of being torn from the home that provided the identity. Some music has the power to affect the spirit world, which in turn impacts the natural world around us.

Common Beliefs about Music

Despite the large number of nations, there are some common beliefs about music held by many native nations, as well as common traits in traditional musical styles. One belief common in most native cultures is that nature is sovereign over people, and that the universe functions under the control of forces external to humans. “Human beings, like all of the phenomena of the universe, must coordinate with the dictates of nature” (Herndon p. 70). Within this world view, music is a tool that helps human beings coordinate and communicate with nature. Music was given to people at the beginning of time as part of creation to use for specific purposes. These purposes are more important than the sounds of the music and any notion of musical beauty. As music serves to help people stay in balance with nature, it has power and is considered medicine. The belief that music has healing power for individuals and communities is extremely common if not universal . This belief is an important theme not only in traditional music but in contemporary commercial music as well. Buffy Sainte-Marie’s 2017 album, which is a retrospective of rock and pop songs throughout her career, is titled Medicine Songs. One of the middle verses of Starwalker, which is included in Medicine Songs, talks about music as a healing power:

Holy light guard the night

Pray up your medicine song oh

straight dealer you’re a spirit healer

keep going on

ay hey way hey way heya

-Buffy Sainte Marie “Starwalker”

Common Musical Traits

Despite the great variety of types of Native American music that we can hear today, several musical traits are common among most Native American musical styles that predate European colonialism. While these styles and songs are old and traditional, they are still very much a part of many Native people’s musical world today. These songs are sung in private and in public; they are heard live on many occasions and recorded on others. Anyone can listen to many recordings on YouTube, Spotify and other public platforms. You can use this Spotify link to hear several traditional songs, but many more exist. Much of traditional Native American music centers on voice and percussion in a texture of one melody over a consistent repeated beat. That repeated beat is sometimes an even, consistent pulse that marks out the meter of the song. Other times it is a two-note short-long pattern with the long note on the accented pulse (da-DUM da-DUM). In either case, the percussion carries what is considered the “heartbeat” of the song and even the cultures.

Most frequently, one or more people sing only one melody line using a native language or vocables. Vocables are syllables that have no specific meaning, and are used in singing for the way that they sound rather than what they mean. Different types of songs use different vocables while songs of the same type use the same vocables. These syllables are set rather than improvised and are sung the same each time a song is sung. The voices often sing with much vibrato and tremolo. For a review and in-depth explanation of the terms and concepts for melody, see Appendix I.

Drums and rattles are the most common percussion instruments used in traditional songs. Instrument materials and construction vary greatly by location.

Because these cultures are tied closely to the land and nature, drums and rattles are made from the most prevalent materials available nearby the instrument maker. Many drums use wood or pottery and animal skin, depending on what materials are in the land around them. For example, water drums are found in different regions throughout North America. These are drums that have a hollow body that contains water. The water impacts the timbre, and the amount of water provides a specific pitch. In the Southwest, especially in areas where there are few trees, the body of the water drum is made from clay; in the Northeast woodland areas, the body is made from wood. In some cases instruments have changed as resources have changed. Many drums are made with a stretched skin; more recently, rubber from tire innertubes has been used. Check out this link for more information on drum materials and construction: Native American Drums: A Brief History of the Early Instruments. Rattles can be made out of cow horns, turtle shells, or gourds with pebbles inside. Again, some instruments have changed as resources have changed. In the mid 20th century, as cans of evaporated milk were shipped to Native American reservations as food subsidies, the cans soon became rattles. In the Southeast region, historically, dancers strap to their legs sets of rattles made from turtle shells; today these rattles might be made from cans. Check out this link for more information on rattle materials and construction: NATIVE RATTLES Making Constructing.

Many native nations have made music on flutes or whistles as part of their older traditions. During the 20th century, the flute common among several of the nations on the Great Plains became popular as an intertribal instrument. (The word intertribal indicates anything that is Native American but common among many nations rather than associated with a single nation.) . Although the Great Plains flute became intertribal in the 20th century, it is still considered “traditional.”

Living Traditions

The concept of traditional can be difficult for people who do not have strong ties to an older, historical culture, because traditions change. Traditions are not set in stone. Some songs are hundreds of years old and are passed down from one generation to the next. This is one set of traditional songs, and the word “traditional” means that the songs have been part of a culture for a very long time. The word “tradition” can also be used more flexibly, to mean something that connects the person closely to their culture and their past. It can mean anything that is a common part of the lives of the people in their cultural group and is associated with their identity as part of that group. One example of this is the common association of horses in the west with Native Americans. This association is so close that horses are always part of the “Cowboy and Indian” stereotype. Horses, though, are European, and were not part of the lives and cultures of Native Americans before the Europeans arrived. Now they are not only a traditional part of some western nations, but there are traditional songs passed down that are about horses.

Traditions change. One meaning of the label “traditional” has more to do with identity and authenticity than historicity. Music that connects on a deep and profound level with the identity of a nation member can be considered “traditional” regardless of origin. Today, both country and blues are seen by some Navajos as traditional because both genres “share the same soulfulness and pathos that is so often part of Navajo peoples’ lives today” that they are both “sonic markers of Navajo tradition and authenticity” (Jacobsen p. 120). In 2015, one of the contestants for Miss Indigenous Northern Arizona University played the piano, which is a European instrument, for the Traditional Talent part of the contest. She played a set of piano pieces by a Navajo composer that were written in a European classical music style, but based on traditional Navajo songs. The pianist told the judges of the contest “For me, the piano is traditional because we are Indigenizing classical music; by playing it in spaces like these, we’re making it our own.” (Jacobsen p. 59-60). So while the piano is a European Instrument and the types of the pieces she played were closer to European Classical Music than Navajo Traditional Song, the pianist identified with piano so strongly that she defined it as traditional.

Native Americans are also still creating songs today in older, traditional styles. At the end of the short National Geographic documentary See What Canyon Life is Like for a Navajo Pageant Winner about two young Navajo women, the two sing a song with all of the traditional traits mentioned above: single melody line over a consistent pulse of a drum, and lyrics that include vocables. The song is about social media and particularly mentions Facebook. The lyrics begin “I read your status last night / you posted that someone else was holding you tight.” Typical lyrics for modern American teenage girls, sung in a very traditional Native American song style. Clearly, for Native Americans the concept of traditional is fluid and not fixed. As a marker of identity, individuals define tradition for themselves (Jacobsen p. 81).

While this book focuses on music of today, it includes discussions of the large impact that historical events have had on music. For example, the colonization of the new world included both Catholic and Protestant missionaries. Because many musical traditions are also religious traditions, changing religions changed many aspects of traditional musical contexts and musical sounds.

Additionally, for centuries, governmental agencies have incentivized or forced small and large groups of people to leave their traditional homes. This impacted music in several different ways. As people moved to new areas with different resources the materials used to create musical instruments changed, so their sounds changed. In extreme cases of forced removal, such as the Cherokee Trail of Tears and the Navajo Long Walk, many people died in the process, especially older culture bearers who could no longer, then, transmit their knowledge to younger people.

Between the 19th and late 20th Centuries, both churches and governmental agencies established boarding schools for Native American children, forcing parents to send their children away during the years they would otherwise be learning their own traditional songs. During these years not only were the children forbidden with strict punishment to sing their songs and speak their language, they were of course taught English and non-native songs and hymns.

While Native Ameicans are no longer forced to leave their homes or send their children to boarding schools today, contemporary events still impact musical lives. The pandemic of 2020 impacted low income and older populations greatly, so it has hit some Native American Nations especially hard. The Navajo Nation, for example, lost many elders, which potentially caused the loss of religious ceremonies and songs. Navajo religious ceremonies are extremely long and complex, lasting up to nine days and nights. Because the ceremonies are so involved individual medicine men only know one or two, which means that some ceremonies might only be known to one person. If that one person dies from the pandemic, the ceremony is also lost. (Morales 2020).

Moving Forward

In the next few chapters, we will explore examples of both traditional and contemporary songs by Native Americans. In Chapter 4: Music of the Navajo Nation, we meet the Benally Family Singers, who perform traditional Navajo songs and dances and the punk-rock group Sihasin, composed of two of the Benally family members. In Chapter 5: Music of the Cherokee Nation, we listen to the music of the Cherokee rapper Litefoot, as well as a traditional Cherokee Stomp Dance that he included on an album of indigenous music produced by his label, Red Vinyl. In Chapter 6, we return to explore the music of Buffy Sainte-Marie within the context of traditional intertribal music and powwow rock. In each chapter we will study the songs within their cultural contexts so that we can fulfill our learning objectives by identifying the musical aesthetics, stylistic elements and instruments, analyzing the music through listening, identifying their cultural values and traits, connecting their musical traits to their cultural traits and explaining how music making and music appreciation are part of the human experience.

WORKS CITED

Herndon, Marsha (1982). Native American Music. Darby Pennsylvania Norwood Editions.

Jacobsen, Kristina M. (2017).  The Sound of Navajo Country: Music, Language, and Diné Belonging.   Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Morales, Laurel. (2020) “Navajo Nation Loses Elders And Tradition To COVID-19.” NPR Weekend Edition Sunday May 31, 2020. https://www.npr.org/2020/05/31/865540308/navajo-nation-loses-elders-and-tradition-to-covid-19

Sainte Marie, Buffy (2017) “Starwalker.”  Medicine Songs. http://buffysainte-marie.com/?page_id=2211#3