Indian Story and Song, from North America

by Alice C. Fletcher

SONG.

British Columbia. Kwakiutl.

Prof. J.C. Fillmore.

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The creation of that which we know as musical form seems also to be due to the influence of story upon song. We have already noted how the directive emotion started the distinctive rhythm and determined the order of the related tones, and so constructed the motive or theme. But neither the rhythm nor the simple motive could express the movement of the dramatic story: hence we find this expressed by the repetition, modification, and variation of the motive, the growth of the phrase, the formation of the clause, and the grouping of clauses into a period,—in fact, the outline of the form upon which all our culture music is built. Culture music, however, shows an intellectual control of emotion, a power of musical thinking, the enlarging and embellishing of musical form,—a form, nevertheless, which we find outlined, more or less clearly, in the songs of the untutored red man. The difference between these spontaneous Indian melodies and the compositions of the modern masters would seem to be not one of kind, but one of degree.

As these songs are from a race practically without musical instruments,—for the drum and rattle were used only to accentuate rhythm,—they are representative of the period when the human voice was the sole means of musical expression,—a period which antedated the invention of instruments by an immeasurable time. They prove, therefore, that musical form was not developed, as has sometimes been stated, by the use of instruments, but that it took its rise in a mental necessity similar to that which gave structure to language.

The influence of song upon story is seen in the attempt to bend prose to a poetic form.

Many Indian songs have no words at all, vocables only being used to float the voice. On classifying these wordless songs, we discover that those which are expressive of the gentle emotions have flowing, breathing vocables, but, where warlike feelings dominate the song, the vocables are aspirate and explosive. In this determinate use of vocables we happen upon what seems to represent the most primitive attempt yet discovered to give intellectual definition in verbal form to an emotion voiced in rhythm and melody.