Miss Natalie Curtis once asked an Indian singer, “Which came first, the words or the music?”
“They came at the same moment,” he answered.
We must accept that explanation for the choicest lyrics: yet we cannot, in that way, account for some performances of remarkable ingenuity. A singer with the art of a counterpuntist may subordinate the iambic word-rhythm of his poem to an alternating three-four and two-four rhythm of the melody, while he dances at the same moment to the unaccented rhythm of the drum. The whole question turns again in his next song in which he faithfully sets the lilt of his verse to the corresponding rhythm of the music. Any first hand comparison of the word-rhythm and the melodic rhythm proceeds with the greatest difficulty. Since the Indian invariably sings the lyrics, often many times, before dictating the words, he tends to employ the melodic rhythm in speaking the lines.
It is possible, of course, that the shifting of natural speech stresses to adapt the verse to the music marks the distinct composition of words and of music, with the latter as the earlier effort. There can be no doubt that, in aboriginal life, music is more generally persistent than words, and that new verses sometimes replace forgotten songs. On the other hand, it is equally certain that many of these misfit songs are only inferior compositions, hobbling in their meter just as the white poet’s lyrics at times go haltingly in their rhythm.
Whether the Indian poet composed his lyric and melody simultaneously or composed the verse to the rhythm of the melody, he conceived his song as an oral expression which should set free his mood through an interpretive accompaniment. That some melodies have changed their verbal associations in the history of centuries may indicate that new experiences have informed their characteristic rhythms. If the original words have been lost, it is entirely possible that the new poem is perfectly adjusted to the music as a genuine re-expression of the rhythm and sweep of the melody. We have a notable instance in English in the poetry of Burns.
Indian lyric poetry has, we have noted, the qualities of oral verse. It employs a number of devices to mark off rhythmic units: stress, accent, range in pitch, quantity, and effort in enunciation. Stress and the higher pitch coincide almost universally. The dramatic and the musical influence require some use of quantity. Aside from its main use in the tag ending of verse or stanza when stress is not used for that purpose, effort in enunciation appears to be an accidental rhythmic element, depending upon the use of the high, close vowels, as e, and the aspirated, closed, and guttural consonants. It is, therefore, least useful when it coincides with the other devices of rhythm—lost, as it must be, in the use of stress. Indian poetry makes a sharp distinction, it must be observed, between accent and stress, the latter requiring definite bodily effort, even explosive enunciation.
The oral rendition of a poem brings us to some unexpected turns in versification. A scholar observes that one must have an Indian throat to sing these songs. This physical control is two fold: unique control of the breathing and contraction or pulsation of the glottis, especially in measures of unusual length. In Indian verse, there is a lengthening of the metrical unit beyond the ordinary limits of European verse in feet of six, seven, eight, and nine syllables, with but one syllable prominent in stress, pitch, or quantity. The Indian sings and speaks on for hours without apparent weariness.
The elemental two and three syllabled feet appear universally in Indian poetry, but commonly in phrases with the longer feet of five to nine syllables, as in the Pledge Song of the Chippewa: nín-da-ca-mi-gog | éya. Another pattern has the recurring metrical phrase of three, six, and five syllables: í e ba | bá-pi-ni-si-wa-gûn | gé-non-de-ci-nan. A rhythmic group of five and one may be varied by the substitution of a three syllabled and a two syllabled measure for that of five syllables. A song may carry a two syllabled rhythm consistently, even when all repetitions of line are disregarded:
O-kú-wah-tsá, úm weh dah án,
Hang wén bo wú u wán moon pí,