what music did the crow tribe listen to

Let'southward begin past watching the following video. Tribal music of the Pacific Northwest probably sounds somewhat familiar to yous in that yous have heard it or music similar to it earlier considering yous live in the Pacific Northwest. Every bit you lot watch the video, consider some things:

• Where have you lot heard this type of music earlier?

• Do you associate it with a specific place/civilisation/people/setting?

• What purpose might this blazon of music serve?

• In this video specifically: what kind of instruments do you lot run across/hear? How does the vocalizations of the singers sound different from what you lot might hear on the radio? What are the musicians wearing? How are they bundled physically? What nigh the music itself? What is hitting y'all most the Rhythm/Melody/Harmony/Timbre/Dynamics/Texture/Form of the music that gives this music its unique quality?

WHO ARE THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST TRIBES?

NATIVE-LANGUAGES.ORG recognizes 64 distinct ethnic tribal groups in the Pacific Northwest located on the North American continent spanning an area from Oregon to Canada and Alaska, forth the Pacific coast and inland to Idaho. The PUYALLUP, the namesake tribe of our city and Pierce College Puyallup campus, is ane sub-tribe of the larger Puget Audio Salish tribal grouping which also encompasses the Skagit, Swinomish, Snohomish/Tulalip, Sauk-Suiattle, Duwamish, Muckleshoot, Nisqually, Sahewamish, Skykomish, Snoqualmie, Suquamish, Stillaquamish and Squaxin tribes. The Salish tribal group has spoken Lushootseed for hundreds of years. An nigh-extinct language due to colonization efforts, Lushootseed has been reclaimed and preserved past Salish tribal members in recent years due, in office, to the efforts of groups like Tulalip Lushootseed and Puyallup Tribal Linguistic communication with missions to revitalize the indigenous languages of Puget Audio.

MUSIC TRADITIONS

The tribal music of the Pacific Northwest has many similarities to music of many tribes across the U.s. and Canada. In full general, the music is vocalization-heavy, relying on instruments to accompany phonation and/or dance (but even most dance music is still vocal). The vocalizations are generally monophonic (sung by a soloist or a group in unison) and ordinarily follow a textural pattern of male person soloist, followed by men in unison, followed by women joining in an octave higher with a drum accompaniment keeping steady vanquish. Often and especially in more contempo times, the lyrics of the songs include or are fabricated up entirely of VOCABLES which are non-lexical words that do not carry specific meaning. Examples in Native American songs include the word "hey" and "yah". Examples in the English language language are words like "uh-huh" and "uh-oh". It is suggested that the use of Vocables help tribal singers to create a more resonant soundscape to connect with the earth in addition to the ability to share music beyond tribes who speak different languages from each other. Vocables as well help to create rhythmic pattern and structure inside a song.

A SACRED Practice

Much like indigenous Australian practices, the musical traditions of many ethnic North Americans are considered to serve a religious function, obscuring the line betwixt secular life and sacred connection with a higher power. Music exists to archive and recite historical events and religious stories, pray to deity, and drag everyday and singular activities in tribal life. While tape of many music and trip the light fantastic practices exist, descriptions and explanations are sparse every bit tribes tend to keep the purpose of their musical offerings private.

Upon embarking on the inquiry for this class, I (Dr. Bove) reached out to several tribal musicians and cultural liaisons, inviting them to share their music and cultural practices with our course. The response I received was gratitude that our class is learning well-nigh our local ethnic music practices and an explanation that the spiritual nature of Salish musical practices prevented tribal members from performing or speaking about them in an academic classroom setting.

Pw WOW

Due to forced migration, assimilation, and movement to reservations across the United States and off historic tribal lands, the indigenous American tribes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries faced more and more dissolution of their traditional practices and means of life.

In the 1920's unlike indigenous tribes began to meet together in cultural celebrations and exchanges known as POW WOWS. These events would be held for a twenty-four hour period, a weekend, and even up to a full calendar week as a way for different tribes to preserve, display, and share their individual cultural practices: nearly especially dance, music, and art. In these events, Native Americans from many tribes beyond the United States participate in "prove and tell"-type displays of their tribal dance and music. In addition, members of many tribes may come together to make music and art together as a style of embracing their shared "Indian-ness" regardless of the tribe they stand for. The Pow Wow serves every bit a mode to exist in a larger customs of which many indigenous populations practice not have access to in their daily lives.

The music generated past the Pw Wow drums is considered one of the most important aspects of whatever Pow Wow. Groups (usually men) of relatives, friends, or drum teams will assemble with beaters seated around a drum and strike the drum head together in unison. This rhythmic tempo provides a foundation for dancers and also singers. Unremarkably the men around the pulsate sing along to their percussive beat, but women and other men standing around the drum circle also often participate, with the women singing up on a higher octave or harmony.

The video higher up was captured at the Puyallup, Wa 2019 Pow Wow (held on the campus of Chief Leschi School). The vocal technique performed in this video in addition to the communal striking of a single pulsate are less similar that of the Pacific Northwest tribes and more reverberate the practices of Great Plains ethnic tribes such as the Apache, Cheyenne, and Comanche. The presence of this music so far west is further proof of the necessity of the Pow Wow to bring ethnic Americans together and preserve their civilization.

POTLATCH

A Potlatch dance in Warning Bay, BC Canada c. 1990

The POTLATCH is a tribal meeting specific to the ethnic people of the Pacific Northwest. Potlatches are a gathering result designed to celebrate major events in tribal membership lives (such as the naming of children, spousal relationship, expiry, etc.) and tribal business with gift giving. Different Anglo-American gift giving (where the one celebrating their event receives the gifts), the individual or family celebrating their life milestone gives gifts to guests as a way of honoring their community and redistributing wealth. The human action of souvenir giving can be quite extreme, with individuals or families giving away well-nigh all of their possessions to friends, relatives, and community members. These highly formalized ceremonies generally final several days and include feasting, storytelling, dance, music, communal singing, and other cultural exchanges.

Potlatch was banned in Canada (the country with the highest population of Potlatch practicing tribes) from 1885 to 1951 because the practice was considered unChristian and anticapitalist. During this fourth dimension, many tribes continued to practise Potlatch in underground, but cultural markers such every bit music, art, and dance became more than challenging to participate in and teach during this fourth dimension. Today, Potlatch ceremonies are more than prevalent and updated to reflect cultural trends. The website U'MISTA POTLATCH hosted by the Virtual Museum of Canada shares these examples of gift giving practices through generations:

GIFTS IN THE 1800S

• beast furs and hides

• carved bentwood boxes

• broken copper strip

• woven cedar blankets

• canoes

• oolichan oil

GIFTS IN THE 1900S

• Hudson's Bay blankets

• dressers

• copper bracelets

• carvings

• flour, sugar

• oolichan oil

GIFTS IN 2000S

• towels and fabric

• laundry baskets

• silver jewelry

• T-shirts with crest designs

• flour, sugar, coffee

• oolichan oil

The site goes on to stress the importance of music both within the context of a Potlatch specifically and communal and individual identity equally an ethnic American.

"A copper is a material item considered very valuable in Kwakwaga'wakw [North Vancouver Island] culture. But perhaps even more valuable than a copper, a vocal is considered the most treasured gift i tin receive. Songs are commonly passed down inside families to the oldest son. No pile of blankets, no thing how high, can equal the value of a song. To receive a song is to receive great cultural wealth and gives a person high status in the community."¹

INSTRUMENTS

Drum

The hand DRUM is the most important instrument in Pacific Northwest tribal music. It consists of an beast hide stretched taught around a shallow circular frame with the use of rawhide cord. The instrument often has the depiction of an creature or human being on the front end face and is struck with a soft beater with a teardrop shaped head. The drum is most often used to constitute tempo and meter of the song, and is not used to perform complex rhythms like drums in many other earth cultures. Also of note, while most tribal drumming across American involves the use of a single, big, communal drum that all members of the drumming grouping strike together, in the Pacific Northwest, drummers each strike their own drum in communal circles.

RATTLE

The RATTLE is another important and spiritual musical instrument to the tribes of the Pacific Northwest. It tin can come up in many shapes and designs, simply a significant and oft-replicated pattern is the Raven Rattle. This rattle appears to be a unproblematic raven figure from distant but on closer inspection, it is a much more complex carving involving the large raven with a box in its mouth, an body of water brute on its belly, a homo effigy and a frog effigy on its dorsum, usually with 1's natural language extending into the other's mouth, and a kingfisher bird blending into the handle. Each of these symbols represent an of import aspect of tribal life or origin mythology and shaking the rattle activates the sensation of lineage and cognition within the participants and observers of the music.

WHISTLE

WHISTLES are often performed in accompaniment with the presence of spirits in religious ceremonies and are considered a highly sacred instrument. The whistles are mostly fashioned in the shape of dissimilar animals to assistance the player take on the characteristics of that brute. Whistles tin also be fashioned in the shape of humans and, specifically, ancestors, every bit is the case with the whistle pictured to the left. Whistles create more of a "sound outcome" and less of a discernible tune. Whistles are often played past dancers while dancing.

FLUTE

Today, the FLUTE is rarely played in Pacific Northwest tribal practices. There is evidence that the instrument was played before heavy colonization and assimilation disrupted its practise. Documents from early enquiry on Pacific Northwest tribes write of the flute beingness used specifically for beloved songs. Due to forced migrations and absorption practices in Canada and the United States, the Native American flute is now a more generalized musical instrument with many different tribes playing the same instrument even if it was not part of their historical cultural practices pre-colonization. For the nigh office in the Pacific Northwest, the use of flute in traditional practice has been abased.

MUSICAL ELEMENTS OF PACIFIC Due north Due west TRIBAL MUSIC

RHYTHM: The rhythms of Pacific Northwest tribal music vary from song to song and tribe to tribe but in general, songs are established and remain at ane tempo for the whole song. Rhythms are unproblematic and symmetrical, ordinarily in duple unproblematic or duple compound meter. The drum is the main source of steady time with singing voices filling in slightly more circuitous rhythms and the rattle and whistle supporting with effect. Sometimes, the rattle is used as a fourth dimension generator along with the pulsate.

MELODY: Melodies are simple and diatonic or pentatonic and tend to operate within a curt range of notes, though singers may frequently leap from a curt range of notes to another curt range of notes higher or lower than the first. There is much repetition in the melodies and the motility is mostly stepwise until a broad leap propels the melody into a new range.

HARMONY: There is no harmony in traditional Pacific Northwestern tribal music as all melodic lines are solo or unison. While there is no evidence today, early writers noted some polyphonic performance in PNW tribal practices which would have created harmony with ii or more pitches sounding simultaneously.

TIMBRE: The preferred song timbre of Pacific Northwestern tribal singers is open, warm, and vibrant. Vocalists sing with a clear tone and no vibrato although they may accentuate sustained pitches with a pulsation from the diaphragm, resulting in a sound resembling: "aaaaAaaaaAaaaaAaaa". Drums are hollow, resonant, and deep.

DYNAMICS: Dynamics in individual pieces may ascension and fall with the volume of the drum accompanied by an increment or decrease in the volume of the voices. Virtually songs stay at an established book.

TEXTURE: Every bit mentioned previously, there is testify that 18th and 19th century tribes performed with some amount of polyphony although there is no polyphonic practice in today's active tribes. Contemporarily, PNW tribal music is monophonic with solo singers, voices in unison, or voices at the octave.

FORM: PNW tribal music is quite repetitive and structured which accompanies the thought that songs are prayers or connection with the spiritual realm and, therefore, repetition heightens the connection. There are not strict formula that can predict different types of musical structures as exist in Western Classical music.

ORAL TRADITION

Similar to the historical practices of the Australian Aboriginals, indigenous Americans (with Pacific Northwestern tribes being no exception) teach and learn through an oral tradition of elders passing downwards tribal knowledge to the young through spoken word and music.

Indigenous Americans consider songs to be a sacred channel of knowledge and passing ownership of them down generationally, every bit well every bit diffusing through customs, to be a swell service to both their ancestors and the futurity vitality of the tribe.

With the loss of tribal living, due in big function to INDIAN RESIDENTIAL SCHOOLS, maintaining oral traditions became nigh incommunicable. Indian Residential Schools were boarding schools established and run by missionaries in the 19th and 20th century that sought to assimilate Native American children into western society with the goal of eradicating tribal presence in the United States and Canada. Young children were forcibly removed from their tribal homes due to a authorities mandate enacted in 1891 and sent to live at the residential schools where they were made to habiliment European-way dress and hair, take English names, read and write in English, and convert to Christianity. In the United states of america, Indian Residential Schools were in operation as late as 1973.

The repercussions of this dark time are deep and far-reaching and have left tribal communities with limited resources to rebuild lost heritages equally elders die without passing on their ancestral knowledge to their descendants.

Members of the Lummi Tribe on San Juan Island at the turn of the 20th century

Indigenous American children housed at a residential school at the plough of the 20th century

COSTUME

Traditional costuming of the Pacific Northwest tribes often involves clothing woven from cedar bawl and hats woven from spruce root. Wool blankets (worn every bit capes) and items made of animal leather are also pop as is the tradition of decorating with shells and beads.

Today, many tribal members choose to participate in music wearing Anglo-American clothing that may or may not be accessorized with traditional indigenous items such as vests or headdresses.

WHERE TO HEAR PNW TRIBAL MUSIC …

• Tacoma Fine art Museum

• Chief Leschi School in Puyallup (Pow Wow Host)

• Tacoma Community Higher Campus (Pow Wow Host)

• Public Tribal Heritage Events

• Puyallup Tribal Language Website

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Source: https://kaitlinbove.com/pnw-tribal-music

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