Pueblo music includes 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 Hopi

Hopi

The Hopi are a federally recognized tribe of indigenous Native American people, who primarily live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona. The Hopi area according to the 2000 census has a population of 6,946 people. Their Hopi language is one of the 30 of the Uto-Aztecan language...

, Zuni, Taos Pueblo

Taos Pueblo

Taos Pueblo is an ancient pueblo belonging to a Taos speaking Native American tribe of Pueblo people. It is approximately 1000 years old and lies about north of the modern city of Taos, New Mexico, USA...

, San Ildefonso, Santo Domingo, and many other Puebloan peoples, and according to 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...

 features one of the most complex Native American music

Native American music

American Indian music is the music that is used, created or performed by Native North Americans, specifically traditional tribal music. In addition to the traditional music of the Native American groups, there now exist pan-tribal and inter-tribal genres as well as distinct Indian subgenres of...

al styles on the continent. Characteristics include common use of hexatonic

Hexatonic scale

In music and music theory, a hexatonic scale is a scale with six pitches or notes per octave. Famous examples include the whole tone scale, C D E F G A C; the augmented scale, C D E G A B C; the Prometheus scale, C D E F A B C; and what some jazz theorists call the "blues scale", C E F F G B...

 and heptatonic scale

Heptatonic scale

A heptatonic scale is a musical scale with seven pitches per octave. Among the most famous of these are the major scale, C D E F G A B C; the melodic minor scale, C D E F G A B C ascending, C B A G F E D C descending; the harmonic minor scale, C D E F G A B C; and a scale variously known as the...

s, variety of form

Musical form

The term musical form refers to the overall structure or plan of a piece of music, and it describes the layout of a composition as divided into sections...

, melodic contour

Melodic motion

Complex melodic motion is the quality of movement of a melody, including nearness or farness of successive pitches or notes in a melody. This may be described as conjunct or disjunct, stepwise or skipwise, respectively and involves the use of the complex number, i, in its calculation.Bruno Nettl ...

, and percussive accompaniment

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...

, melodic range averaging between an octave and a twelfth, with rhythmic complexity equal to the Plains Indians musical sub-area.

Nettl cites the Kachina

Kachina

A kachina is a spirit being in western Pueblo cosmology and religious practices. The western Pueblo, Native American cultures located in the southwestern United States, include Hopi, Zuni, Tewa Village , Acoma Pueblo, and Laguna Pueblo. The kachina cult has spread to more eastern Pueblos, e.g....

 dance songs as the most complex songs and the music of Hopi and Zuni as the most complex of the Pueblo, while Tanoan

Tanoan languages

Tanoan is a family of languages spoken in New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.Most of the languages – Tiwa , Tewa, and Towa – are spoken in the Pueblos of New Mexico and were the ones first given the collective name Tanoan, while Kiowa is spoken mostly in southwestern...

 and Keresan music is simpler and intermediate between the Plains and western Pueblos. The music of the Pima

Pima

The Pima are a group of American Indians living in an area consisting of what is now central and southern Arizona. The long name, "Akimel O'odham", means "river people". They are closely related to the Tohono O'odham and the Hia C-ed O'odham...

 and Papago

Tohono O'odham

The Tohono O'odham are a group of Native American people who reside primarily in the Sonoran Desert of the southeastern Arizona and northwest Mexico...

 is intermediary between the Plains-Pueblo and the California-Yuman music areas, with melodic movement of the Yuman, though including the rise

Rise

Rise or RISE may refer to:* Moving up-Music:* A type of melodic motion* Rise Records, a record label* Rise, an alias used by Paul Oakenfold and Steve Osborne-Albums:...

, and the form and rhythm of the Pueblo. (Nettl 1956, p. 112-113)

Work song

Work song

A work song is a piece of music closely connected to a specific form of work, either sung while conducting a task or a song linked to a task or trade which might be a connected narrative, description, or protest song....

s are found in Pueblo music, but are otherwise mostly unknown among Native American folk music (Nettl, 1965, p. 152).

One well-known melody from the Zuni people is Zuni Sunrise or The Sunrise Call, a song frequently played on Native American Flute

Native American flute

The Native American flute has achieved some measure of fame for its distinctive sound, used in a variety of New Age and world music recordings. The instrument was originally very personal; its music was played without accompaniment in courtship, healing, meditation, and spiritual rituals. Now it...

. This melody was initially collected by Carlos Troyer and published in an arrangement for voice and piano in 1904.

Sources

• Nettl, Bruno (1956). Music in Primitive Culture. Harvard University Press.
• Nettl, Bruno (1965). Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents. Prentice-Hall, Inc.