Blackfoot music is the music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

 of the Blackfoot

Blackfoot

The Blackfoot Confederacy or Niitsítapi is the collective name of three First Nations in Alberta and one Native American tribe in Montana....

 tribes (best translated in the Blackfoot language

Blackfeet

The Piegan Blackfeet are a tribe of Native Americans of the Algonquian language family based in Montana, having lived in this area since around 6,500 BC. Many members of the tribe live as part of the Blackfeet Nation in northwestern Montana, with population centered in Browning...

 as nitsínixki - "I sing", from nínixksini - "song"). Singing

Singing

Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...

 predominates and was accompanied

Accompaniment

In music, accompaniment is the art of playing along with an instrumental or vocal soloist or ensemble, often known as the lead, in a supporting manner...

 only by percussion. (Nettl, 1989)

Bruno Nettl (1989, p. 162-163) proposes that Blackfoot music is an "emblem of the heroic and the difficult in Blackfoot life," with performance practices that strongly distinguish music from the rest of life. Singing is strongly distinguished from speech and many songs contain no words, and those with texts often describe important parts of myths in a succinct manner. Music is associated closely with war

War

War is a state of organized, armed, and often prolonged conflict carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality. War should be understood as an actual, intentional and widespread armed conflict between political...

fare and most singing is done by men and much by community leaders. "The acquisition of songs as associated with difficult feats--learned in visions brought about through self-denial and torture, required to be learned quickly, sung with the expenditure of great energy, sung in a difficult vocal style--all of this puts songs in the category of the heroic and the difficult."

Instrumentation

Blackfoot music is primarily vocal, using few instrument

Musical instrument

A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...

s (called ninixkiátsis, derived from the word for song and associated primarily with Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

an-American instruments), only percussion

Percussion instrument

A percussion instrument is any object which produces a sound when hit with an implement or when it is shaken, rubbed, scraped, or otherwise acted upon in a way that sets the object into vibration...

 and voice, and few words. By far the most important percussion instruments are drum

Drum

The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...

s (istókimatsis), with rattle

Rattle (percussion)

A rattle is a percussion instrument. It consists of a hollow body filled with small uniform solid objects, like sand or nuts. Rhythmical shaking of this instrument produces repetitive, rather dry timbre noises. In some kinds of music, a rattle assumes the role of the metronome, as an alternative to...

s (auaná) and bell

Bell (instrument)

A bell is a simple sound-making device. The bell is a percussion instrument and an idiophone. Its form is usually a hollow, cup-shaped object, which resonates upon being struck...

s often being associated with the objects, such as sticks or dancers legs, they are attached to rather than as instruments of their own. (Nettl 1989)

Singing

Singing consists mostly of vocable

Vocable

In speech, a vocable is an utterance, term, or word that is capable of being spoken and recognized. A non-lexical vocable is used without semantic role or meaning, while structure of vocables is often considered apart from any meaning...

s, though recordings and reports from the early 1900s and prior indicate there were a great deal more lyrics

Lyrics

Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...

 or vocal texts. Blackfoot people see the profusion of words in European American music and African American music

African American music

African-American music is an umbrella term given to a range of musics and musical genres emerging from or influenced by the culture of African Americans, who have long constituted a large and significant ethnic minority of the population of the United States...

 as lessening the importance and meaning of both words and music; and the same for the manner of listening to such music, that is, for entertainment

Entertainment

Entertainment consists of any activity which provides a diversion or permits people to amuse themselves in their leisure time. Entertainment is generally passive, such as watching opera or a movie. Active forms of amusement, such as sports, are more often considered to be recreation...

 or enjoyment, often while doing other things: if someone needed to say so many words, why didn't they just talk (p.69). Blackfoot music is not based on instruments or texts, and singing is not supposed to sound like talking (or imitate any other sound). Typically, songs which contain texts are short and not repetitive, such as: "It's a bad thing to be an old man," (Nettl, 1989, p.73, 1951 recording of a Crazy Dog Society song) or the relatively lengthy, "Yonder woman, you must take me. I am powerful. Yonder woman, you must take me, you must hear me. Where I sit is powerful." (Nettl, 1989, p.73, Wissler and Duvall 1909:85 sung by a rock to a woman in the buffalo-rock myth). Often when the text takes up most of the melody with fewer vocables the melodies are short. The vocables used, as in Plains Indian singing, are the consonant

Consonant

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are , pronounced with the lips; , pronounced with the front of the tongue; , pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; and ,...

s h, y, w, and vowel

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s. They avoid n, c (ts) and other consonants. i and e tend slightly to be higher in pitch

Pitch (music)

Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...

, a, o, and u lower (p.71). (Nettl, 1989)
Solo singing may have been more prominent, or the norm, in the past, but group singing has increased in prominence, with singing/drumming groups called "drums". Vocal blending is not required in ensemble singing. The leader may begin the head motive

Motif (music)

In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....

 or phrase

Phrase (music)

In music and music theory, phrase and phrasing are concepts and practices related to grouping consecutive melodic notes, both in their composition and performance...

 of a song, and then be repeated or "raised" by another singer, possibly the second singer (p.149). In pan-Indian powwow terminology, stanza

Stanza

In poetry, a stanza is a unit within a larger poem. In modern poetry, the term is often equivalent with strophe; in popular vocal music, a stanza is typically referred to as a "verse"...

s to a song are often called "push-ups" (p.150). (Nettl, 1989)

Vocal style

The vocal style is similar to other Plains Indians with: "high-pitched beginnings, pulsations, vocal narrowness. [and] nasality." (p.67) "Pulsations on longer tones, the audible effects of tension, nasality, substantial rasp

Rasp

A rasp is a tool used for shaping wood or other material. It consists of a point or the tip, then a long steel bar or the belly, then the heel or bottom, then the tang. The tang is joined to a handle, usually made of plastic or wood. The bar has sharp teeth...

, and some ornamentation are characteristic." (p. 43) Though this may have become "exaggerated" through influence from Plains Indian music and pan-Indian music, Blackfoot singing is "more intense and uses a higher tessitura

Tessitura

In music, the term tessitura generally describes the most musically acceptable and comfortable range for a given singer or, less frequently, musical instrument; the range in which a given type of voice presents its best-sounding texture or timbre...

," than most Plains Indian music. From comparison of recordings one would agree with older consultants in the latter 1900s: "These younger fellows, they sing higher and louder than we used to." (pg.67) Experimentation

Experimental music

Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...

 with European influenced instrumentation and harmony

Harmony

In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

 happen but are rare, and the vocal style is the element least tampered with it being considered essential to "sound like Indian songs" (p.68). Though the European influenced concept of meter may be inapplicable to Blackfoot music as it is characterized by the relationships between phrases usually of irregular length, the beat level generally equals the rate at which vocal pulsations occur (p.44). (Nettl, 1989)

Drumming

Singing without drums is extremely rare and considered inappropriate (Nettl, 1989). The drum accompaniment to songs is rhythm

Rhythm

Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...

ically independent to the singing but in perfect unison, "slightly off the beat", and "often related roughly by the proportion of 2:3," to the vocal pulse or beat level (though see Pantaleoni, 1987). Another change in Blackfoot music is increased relatedness of the drum part to the song now than in the past. Often drumming over repeated sections that comprise a song begins with players softly striking the rim of the bass drum. The tempo

Tempo

In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...

 increases as the drumming moves further to the center of the drum skin. At some point "hard beats", loud strokes off the rhythm by an individual, sometimes the leader, and beats may be omitted. Drumming may pause for a phrase or two in the last stanza of the last repetition and finish loudly. When playing the stick game, players drum upon a plank, and the drumming is more likely to coincide with vocal beats, but less accurate unison playing. Rattles are no longer used. (Nettl, 1989, p.157)

Drumming has increased in prominence since 1900, now being virtually required, possibly because of the influence of pan-tribal culture, the decreased use of rattles and other percussion, or the decrease in frequency of songs texts. The use of the term "drumming" for musician/singer also increased between the 1960s and the 1980s. (Nettl, 1989)

Song composition

Traditionally, songs are considered to be given, completed, to individual Blackfoot people in visions

Hallucination

A hallucination, in the broadest sense of the word, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid,...

 or dream

Dream

Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, philosophical intrigue and religious...

s. Though it is now accepted that music, especially white music, may be composed in the European influenced sense, the traditional view still greatly affects how songs and their creation or origin are considered. Songs are considered somewhat like objects, in that they may be created of components, but once finished become a unity. They may also be "given" or even sold. Some songs belong to everyone, some songs to just one person but may be sung by others, and some songs individuals save until times of great need. Two songs which may be aurally identical may considered different songs if they have different origins, i.e., came from different visions. (Nettl, 1989)

Most songs, except gambling songs which simply repeat "litany-like" one or two phrases, are characterized by an "incomplete repetition" formal pattern, "many of them can ultimately be reduced to a binary form in which the section is a variation

Variation (music)

In music, variation is a formal technique where material is repeated in an altered form. The changes may involve harmony, melody, counterpoint, rhythm, timbre, orchestration or any combination of these.-Variation form:...

 and/or reduction of the first." (p.43) However, there was more formal variation in the past (p.100). Songs sung with medicine basket openings and gamblings songs often use isometric

Isometre

Isometre is a music theory term describing the use of pulse without regular meter. See also: homorhythm. The music is currently used in the psalmsongs of the Orthodox Reformed Churches in the Netherlands, based on the rhythm made by Petrus Datheen , as well as some other churches....

 and isorhythm

Isorhythm

Isorhythm is a musical technique that arranges a fixed pattern of pitches with a repeating rhythmic pattern.-Detail:...

ic rhythmic structures or lesser note

Note

In music, the term note has two primary meanings:#A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#A pitched sound itself....

-ength values (p.44). Typically songs begin in falsetto

Falsetto

Falsetto is the vocal register occupying the frequency range just above the modal voice register and overlapping with it by approximately one octave. It is produced by the vibration of the ligamentous edges of the vocal folds, in whole or in part...

 before singers move to their head voice

Head voice

Head voice is a term used within vocal music. The use of this term varies widely within vocal pedagogical circles and there is currently no one consistent opinion among vocal music professionals regarding this term...

s. Octave equivalence appears to be used, as transposition

Transposition (music)

In music transposition refers to the process, or operation, of moving a collection of notes up or down in pitch by a constant interval.For example, one might transpose an entire piece of music into another key...

 down by an octave

Octave

In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...

 of subsequent repetitions of a section is common, though may also occur down a perfect fourth

Perfect fourth

In classical music from Western culture, a fourth is a musical interval encompassing four staff positions , and the perfect fourth is a fourth spanning five semitones. For example, the ascending interval from C to the next F is a perfect fourth, as the note F lies five semitones above C, and there...

 or perfect fifth

Perfect fifth

In classical music from Western culture, a fifth is a musical interval encompassing five staff positions , and the perfect fifth is a fifth spanning seven semitones, or in meantone, four diatonic semitones and three chromatic semitones...

 (p.43). Songs begin with a "head motif" repeated by the second singer and then used to "generate" the rest of the song in ways which are fairly predictable to Blackfoot listeners, which facilitates accomplishing the ideal of learning songs in one hearing (p.100-101).

Genres and repertoire

Children do not have their own song

Children's music

Children's music is used here to refer to music composed and performed for children by adults. In European influenced contexts this means music, usually songs, written specifically for a juvenile audience. The composers are usually adults. Children's music has historically held both entertainment...

 or game song repertoire, except for Mice Songs associated with one game (p.85), and songs usually called lullabies

Lullaby

A lullaby is a soothing song, usually sung to young children before they go to sleep, with the intention of speeding that process. As a result they are often simple and repetitive. Lullabies can be found in every culture and since the ancient period....

 sung to them by their mothers. Women used to have their own small repertoire of lullabies, lament

Lament

A lament or lamentation is a song, poem, or piece of music expressing grief, regret, or mourning.-History:Many of the oldest and most lasting poems in human history have been laments. Laments are present in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, and laments continued to be sung in elegiacs accompanied by...

s, and other songs, but these have been largely lost. Two-Spirit

Two-Spirit

Two-Spirit People , is an English term that emerged in 1990 out of the third annual inter-tribal Native American/First Nations gay/lesbian American conference in Winnipeg. It describes Indigenous North Americans who fulfill one of many mixed gender roles found traditionally among many Native...

 "manly-hearted women" (Lewis, 1941) who act in much of the social roles of men, were in the past also willing to sing alone and use a men's singing style. (Nettl, 1989, p.84, 125).

Scales and intervals

Musical scale

Musical scale

In music, a scale is a sequence of musical notes in ascending and descending order. Most commonly, especially in the context of the common practice period, the notes of a scale will belong to a single key, thus providing material for or being used to conveniently represent part or all of a musical...

s tend to be fairly equally spaced tetratonic

Musical scale

In music, a scale is a sequence of musical notes in ascending and descending order. Most commonly, especially in the context of the common practice period, the notes of a scale will belong to a single key, thus providing material for or being used to conveniently represent part or all of a musical...

, pentatonic

Pentatonic scale

A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave in contrast to a heptatonic scale such as the major scale and minor scale...

, or rarely hexatonic or heptatonic scales with occasional major second

Major second

In Western music theory, a major second is a musical interval spanning two semitones, and encompassing two adjacent staff positions . For example, the interval from C to D is a major second, as the note D lies two semitones above C, and the two notes are notated on adjacent staff postions...

s and rare minor second

Minor second

In modern Western tonal music theory a minor second is the interval between two notes on adjacent staff positions, or having adjacent note letters, whose alterations cause them to be one semitone or half-step apart, such as B and C or C and D....

s. (Nettl, 1989, p. 43)

Musical thought

The basic musical unit in Blackfoot music is the song

Song

In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing.A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs...

, and musician

Musician

A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

s, people who sing and drum, are called singers or drummer

Drummer

A drummer is a musician who is capable of playing drums, which includes but is not limited to a drum kit and accessory based hardware which includes an assortment of pedals and standing support mechanisms, marching percussion and/or any musical instrument that is struck within the context of a...

s with both words being equivalent and referring to both activities (p.49). Women, though increasingly equal participants, are not called singers or drummers and it is considered somewhat inappropriate for women to sing loudly or alone. Páskani - "dance" or "ceremony" - often implicitly includes music and is often applied to ceremonies with little dancing and much singing. (Nettl, 1989)

Blackfoot musical thought is also more enumerative

Enumeration

In mathematics and theoretical computer science, the broadest and most abstract definition of an enumeration of a set is an exact listing of all of its elements . The restrictions imposed on the type of list used depend on the branch of mathematics and the context in which one is working...

 than European influenced musical thought which tends to be more hierarchical. Songs are differentiated primarily by use: in ceremonies, often associated with specific objects (especially in medicine bundle

Medicine bundle

A medicine bundle is a wrapped package used by Native Americans for religious purposes. A package of this type can also be referred to as a medicine bag. Medicine bundles are usually employed as a ritual aid in Shamanistic religions...

s), concepts, dance

Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

s, or actions, or during gambling (hand game), or other uses. Songs are differentiated secondarily by association with a person, and thirdly and less commonly by association with a story or event. There are no types of music which are considered more or less music or musical

Definition of music

How to define music has long been the subject of debate; philosophers, musicians, and, more recently, various social and natural scientists have argued about what constitutes music. The definition has varied through history, in different regions, and within societies. Definitions vary as music,...

, such as in Iranian musical thought. (Nettl, 1989)

Music, singing, is not thought to be like speech, or any other sound at all. There are no spoken introductions or conclusions and no "intermediary forms" between speech and singing (pg.50).

Rehearsing happens increasingly, likely because of the influence of European influenced concepts of performance, song origin or composition, and a change in the purpose of music: from communication with the supernatural to communication with other humans.

Ethnography

As the Blackfoot are one of the most studied American Indian groups

Native American Studies

Native American Studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that examines the history, culture, politics, issues and contemporary experience of Native peoples in North America, or, taking a hemispheric approach, the Americas...

 there are many collections of Blackfoot music, the largest being at the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University

Indiana University

Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...

. Historical comparisons may be made as the earliest recordings of Blackfoot music were done on wax cylinders. The first recordings, by George Bird Grinnell

George Bird Grinnell

George Bird Grinnell was an American anthropologist, historian, naturalist, and writer. Grinnell was born in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in 1870 and a Ph.D. in 1880. Originally specializing in zoology, he became a prominent early conservationist and student...

 in 1897, are of James White Calf or others singing around forty songs in or around the Blackfoot Nation. The second set of recording, by Clark Wissler in 1903 and 1904 contains 146 cylinders, part of his larger studies and the third, by J.K. Dixon of the Wanamaker Expedition No. 2 in 1909, includes several songs sung mostly by Chief Bull at the Crow Agency. The next big collection, by Jane Richardson Hanks accompanied by husband Lucien Hanks in 1938, was recorded in Gleichen, Alberta

Gleichen, Alberta

Gleichen is a hamlet in southeast Alberta, Canada within Wheatland County. It is located adjacent to the Siksika Nation at the intersection of Highway 1 and Highway 547, approximately southeast of Strathmore.- History :...

 among the Canadian Blackoot

Siksika Nation

The Siksika Nation is a First Nation in southern Alberta, Canada. The name Siksiká comes from the Blackfoot words sik and iká , with a connector s between the two words. The plural form of Siksiká is Siksikáwa...

 and featured Spumiapi ("White-Headed Chief"). After the invention of the tape recorder thousands of songs where recorded by Indians, ethnomusicologists, hobbyists and students, and record companies. (Nettl 1973)

Though these recordings are countless there are chronological gaps (1910-1950), complex music and culture changed rapidly, and the various groups are treated unevenly. Additionally there are few studies of the musical culture (most recordings being made as part of ethnographic studies), mostly by Bruno Nettl

Bruno Nettl

Bruno Nettl is an active ethnomusicologist and musicologist.Bruno Nettl was born in Czechoslovakia in 1930, moved to United States in 1939, studied at Indiana University and the University of Michigan, and has taught since 1964 at the University of Illinois, where he is Professor Emeritus of...

. (ibid)

Public interest in Blackfoot music is indicated by the release of two records (17611 and 17635), recorded unexplainably in New York in 1914. Beginning in the 1950s professional singing groups where formed. (ibid)

Current traditional musical groups and musicians

• Black Lodge Singers
  Black Lodge Singers
  The Black Lodge Singers of White Swan, Washington are a Native American northern drum group led by Kenny Scabby Robe, of the Blackfeet Nation. The Black Lodge Singers are largely drawn from his twelve sons...
  
  
• Heart Butte Singers
• Young Grey Horse Society
• Two Medicine Lake Singers
• Troy De Roche

Source

• Nettl, Bruno (1973). Liner notes to An Historical Album of Blackfeet Indian Music. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings: FE 34001.
• Nettl, Bruno (1989). Blackfoot Musical Thought: Comparative Perspectives. Ohio: The Kent State University Press. ISBN 0-87338-370-2.

Further listening

• An Historical Album of Blackfeet Indian Musie. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings: FE 34001.

External links

• http://www.angelfire.com/ar/waakomimm/midi.html
• http://blackfootdigitallibrary.org