An Introduction to America’s Music

516 PART 4 | SINCE WORLD WAR II

Although the format varies from place to place, music and dance form the

core of any pow wow, along with arts and crafts, food, raffl es, and the honoring

of respected guests. War Dances involve many dancers, each with his or her own

choreography and costume. Other dances, such as the Men’s Traditional and

the Women’s Jingle Dress, have more prescribed steps and dress. Social, exhibi-

tion, and contest dances, in which participants compete for prizes, round out

the program.

An ensemble of singers, called a drum, provides the music while seated around

a large double-headed bass drum, which all members play with padded drum-

sticks. Traditionally, only men play the drum; women may stand in an outer ring

and join in the singing. All-women and mixed-gender drums are more recent

phenomena. The music is derived from Plains Indian styles and features tense,

nasal singing in the upper register (more so in the Northern Plains than the

Southern Plains style), heav y pulsations on sustained tones, portamento, ter-

raced melodic descents, and texts that rely on vocables.

The War Dance song on the accompanying track (LG 21.1) was recorded in

August 1975 by Cherokee ethnomusicologist Charlotte Heth at the sixth annual

Kihekah Steh Pow wow in Skiatook, Oklahoma, a suburb of Tulsa. The thirteen

male singers who formed the drum for this intertribal performance represent a

variety of Indian nations now living in Oklahoma, including the Pawnee, Ponca,

Sac and Fox, Quapaw, Osage, and Kiowa. Only the last three are native to the South-

ern Plains; the others were relocated from the Northern Plains in the late 1800s.

This song was part of the Flag Parade that brought the 1975 pow wow to a close.

War Dance songs are typically sung a few times in succession before the drum

moves on to a new song. Each time through a song, called a push, has a set form.

The leader begins with a lead, and the ensemble (often a second singer, then the

full group) repeats and extends the leader’s phrase: this is the second. The lead

and second form the fi rst part of the push: aa'. The full ensemble then continues

with the chorus, which comprises two contrasting phrases, bc. The lead begins on

the melodic apex, the music describes a terraced descent, and the chorus ends

on the melodic nadir.

LG 21.1

War Dance song

structure

K An ensemble of singers,

or drum, at a modern

powwow.

172028_21_514-530_r2_mr.indd 516 23/01/13 11:18 AM