We have a name for everything, but the American Indian has a name and a song for everything. He has a song for his moccasins, for his head-gear, for his teepee, the fire in it, the forest around him, the lakes and rivers in which he fishes and paddles, for his canoe, for the fish he catches, for his gods, his friends, his family, his enemies, the animal he hunts, the maiden he woos, the stars, the sun, and the moon, in fact for everything imaginable. The following little story will explain the Indians’ idea of the use of their songs:
An American visitor who was making a collection of Indian songs, asked an old Ojibway song-leader to sing a hunting song. The old Indian looked at him in surprise and left him. A little later the son-in-law of the Indian appeared and with apologies told the American that “the old gentleman” could not sing a hunting song because it was not the hunting season.
The next time the old Indian came, the American asked him for a love song, but he politely refused, saying that it was not dignified for a man of his age to sing love songs. However, the old warrior suddenly decided that as he was making a call, it was quite proper for him to sing Visiting Songs, which he did, to his host’s delight.
This old man had been taught to sing when he was a very little boy, as the Indian boy learns the history of his tribe through the songs. He is carefully trained by the old men and women so that no song of the tribe or family should be forgotten. These songs are handed down from one family to another, and no one knows how many hundreds of years old they may be. So, you see, these songs become history and the young Indians learn their history this way, not as we do, from text books.
“What new songs did you learn?” is the question that one Indian will ask of another who has been away on a visit, and like the announcer at the radio broadcasting station, the Indian answers:
“My friends, I will now sing you a song of—” and he fully describes the song. Then he sings it. After he finishes, he says, “My friends, I have sung you the song of—” and repeats the name of the song!
So great a part of an Indian’s life is music, that he has no word meaning poetry in his language. Poetry to the Indian is always song. In fact an Indian puts new words to an old tune and thinks he has invented a new song.
What Is Indian Music?
When the Indian sings, he starts on the highest tone he can reach and gradually drops to the lowest, so that many of his songs cover almost two octaves. He does not know that he sings in a scale of five tones. For some reason which we cannot explain, most primitive races have used this same scale. It is like our five black keys on the piano, starting with F sharp. This is called the pentatonic scale, (penta, Greek word for five, tonic meaning tones). This scale is a most amazing traveler, for we meet it in our musical journeys in China, Japan, Arabia, Scotland, Africa, Ireland, ancient Peru and Mexico, Greece and many other places. The reason we find these five tones popular must be because they are natural for the human throat. At any rate we know that it is difficult for the Indian to sing our scale. He does not seem to want the two notes that we use between the two groups of black keys which make our familiar major scale.
It is very difficult to put down an Indian song in our musical writing, because, the Indians sing in a natural scale that has not been changed by centuries of musical learning. They sing in a rhythm that seems complicated to our ears in spite of all our musical knowledge, and this, too, is difficult to write down. Another thing which makes it hard to set down and to imitate Indian music, is that they beat the drum in different time from the song which they sing. They seldom strike the drum and sing a tone at the same time. In fact, the drum and the voice seem to race with each other. At the beginning of a song, for example, the drum beat is slower than the voice. Gradually the drum catches up with the voice and for a few measures they run along together. The drum gains and wins the race, because it is played faster than the voice sings. The curious part of it is, that this is not an accident, but every time they sing the same song, the race is run the same way. We are trained to count the beats and sing beat for beat, measure for measure with the drum. Try to beat on a drum and sing, and see how hard it is not to keep time with it.