An Introduction to America’s Music

CHAPTER 9 | ANGLO-CELTIC BALLADS AND THEIR COLLECTORS 215

coincide with the pulse of the vocal part—not an unusual rhythmic complication

in American Indian music.

Densmore apparently asked her informant to sing several repetitions of the

song but did not attempt to synchronize the singer’s beginning with the recording

machine’s. Her recording cylinder captured the end of one song statement and two

complete statements, separated by the sound of the elderly Brave Buffalo clearing

his throat. Thus the recording begins with the fourth of the song’s fi ve phrases.

Brave Buffalo’s rather tense, nasal vocal timbre is characteristic of the North-

ern Plains, as is his practice of pitching the song high in his vocal range. The

song’s short, repetitive text, which mixes words with vocables, is also representa-

tive of Northern Plains music. The use of a gapped scale, in which some adjacent

pitches are separated by a minor third, is common to nearly all Indian songs, not

only those of the Plains Indians. A feature of Northern Plains songs particularly

well represented here is what ethnomusicologists call the terraced descent: the

tendency for each phrase to begin at or near the song’s apex and descend step-

wise, ending at or near the nadir. The place of the song in its culture—its healing

function, the personal ownership of the song, and the understanding of its ori-

gin as supernatural—is also common to songs of the Northern Plains.

Fletcher, Densmore, and other pioneering ethnomusicologists developed

bonds of trust and communication with hundreds of individuals, allowing

them to collect thousands of examples of traditional music. By carefully analyz-

ing each song, they built a body of knowledge that continues to be a resource

for scholars today. Only after a huge amount of material had been amassed and

classifi ed did it become possible to speak with assurance about the general char-

acteristics of that music.

ANGLO-CELTIC BALLADS AND THEIR

COLLECTORS

The work of American folk song collectors began as the study of an Old World

folk repertory: traditional ballads from the British Isles. Around the time of

the American Revolution, as chapter 2 has already related, those “old, simple

Listen & Refl ect

1. Most of the pitches in this melody lie in the pentatonic scale, but one, repeated in phrases
   2, 3, and 5, lies outside that scale (it can be thought of as a bending of one pitch in the
   scale) and is diffi cult to transcribe. To non-Indian ears the pitch in question may sound
   simply “out of tune.” Can you hear it?


2. Densmore estimates that Tatan ka-ohi tika was about seventy-three years old when he
   sang “A Buffalo Said to Me” for her sometime in 1911–14, and he recalled receiving the
   song when he was ten years old. In about what year did he receive the song?

Listening Guide 9.1

“A Buffalo Said to Me”

CD 1.28 TATAN KA-OHI TIKA (BRAVE BUFFALO)

Northern Plains style

traits

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