Sunday earned a PhD in Anthropology and has taught college courses in Anthropology, English, and high school ACT/SAT Prep.
Odds are, if you ever watched a film about the American West, like Dances with Wolves, you heard traditional Native American music. However, you were likely only exposed to the music of tribes from the Great Plains of the prairie land west of the Mississippi River, such as the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Pawnee. Their music, especially their singing, is the iconic perception of Native American music in popular culture. You may be surprised to learn how diverse traditional Native American music really is, varying greatly by region and tribe. It includes a number of instruments from the percussion and woodwind families of instruments to accompany the most important of all instruments in their repertoire - the human voice.
Among the non-vocal instruments, percussion is the most ubiquitous among the North American tribes. Although rattles, striking sticks, and bells are common, the drum remains the most utilized and important of this instrument family.
Types of drums and their uses vary across the continent. From small, handheld drums to the gigantic, multi-user powwow drum, this instrument is used in communal activities, rituals, ceremonies, and in shamanic magic. Among Plains tribes, most drumming uses handheld drums, 12-18 inches across, with a rawhide skin on one or both sides. The Kwakiutl, however, used a large wooden plank and striking sticks with multiple players on a single instrument. For some of these tribes, the drumming represents a spirit presence with rapid drumming signaling its manifestation.
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Among the Great Plains tribes, a large powwow drum is played by several people at once, signifying a unity among the family or social group. These drums can be several feet across and keep rhythm as the singers perform traditional family songs dating back generations. Today, at large powwow gatherings, groups of 10-12 performers compete in drumming contests measuring their combined skills, craftsmanship of drums, and accompanying songs.
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Other common percussion instruments include rattles and bells. Ranging in use from the Southeast to the Arctic Northwest, Native Americans craft rattles out of all manner of natural materials, including gourds, carved wood and bark, animal horns and hooves, and turtle shells. Bells, traditionally made of clay but now usually metal construction, are worn on the feet and hands of dancers.
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The two most common woodwind instruments in Native American music are flutes and whistles, differing in that flutes have several finger-holes to change sound while whistles produce a single sound. Among the tribes of the Southwest, flutes were used as early as the 7th century. Among the Apache of the Great Plains, flutes exclusively accompanied love songs, although Native American flutes are now applied to different song types. Whistles, a less common instrument, shared the significance of the drum among Northwest Coastal tribes in representing the manifestation of spirits.
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The primary musical instrument across all tribes in North America is the human voice, giving life to sacred prayers, passing down legends and traditions, and expressing the soul of the community's identity. Singing styles, however, vary as widely across the tribes as the languages they speak, but are differentiated by more than just words. The most well-known, as the beginning of the lesson points out, are the songs of indigenous tribes of the Great Plains. In the Northern Plains, singing involves a high vocal range while the Southern Plains employ a medium range. Both sing in a tense, strained style that begins high and drops to a lower range with a fluttering tongue to produce wavering sounds. Singers join in unison to produce one song with many voices.
In the Eastern Woodlands, singing involves complex rhythms with call-and-response songs. Southwestern Native Americans, those in the Great Basin, prefer singing simple, un-ornamented melodies. In the Northwestern Coastal areas, complex rhythms are accompanied by several singers using different tones simultaneously, a feat called polyphony. Finally, and perhaps more fascinatingly, the Arctic tribes of the Inuit employ throat singing, using resonance from the lower throat and upper chest to create a deep, undulating sound. This form of vocalization also occurs among Mongolian tribes living in the northern part of Asia.
As we can see, there is no single type of Native American music, although the use of music from the Great Plains in popular media may leave the impression. Each cultural group possesses its own assortment of instruments, with drums, flutes, and rattles more common throughout North America. Drums range from small, handheld items to large powwow drums played in unison by 10-12 singers. Drums signify the presence of spirits. Flutes differ from whistles by possessing finger-holes to change the sound, though some groups like the Apache only traditionally used them for love songs. Across all tribes, however, the human voice remains the most common and important instrument with singing styles varying greatly. The Arctic Inuit, for example, use a unique method of resonance in their lower throat called throat singing while singers in some Northwest Coastal tribes use different tones sung simultaneously, a style called polyphony, with complex drum rhythms.
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