The Song Of The Indian

American Indian Songs & Chants by Outstanding Tribal Singers


Play song

Name

Performed by

Description

Native Words

Translation

Notes

Song Of The Sky City Natay, Navajo Singer Acoma, Indian Pueblo in New Mexico, is know as the Sky City because it is perched atop a 350 foot high rock which rises shear from the middle of the plain. Acoma is reached only by climbing up rocky paths and ledges. The Indians who lived there were industrious farmers, almost without exception tall, handsome men, who came down to the plains below each day to farm, and who hauled the fruits of their labors up those rocky paths after the harvest. Nowadays they live closer to the farms, and preserve their Sky City as it was in ages past for ceremonials and for special events.


Out of Acoma has come one of the most melodious of all Indian Songs, and Natay Navajo Singer presents this beautiful song.


The music has the breadth and sweep that one expects to come forth from a Sky City, and one can actually feel it pour forth from that high rock and float out over space and over the plains below!

Acoma
Mountain Spirit Dance C. Hoffman & San Carlos Apaches, San Carlos, Arizona The Apache Mountain Spirit Dance (called variously the Crown Dance because of the crowns worn by the dancers, and the Devil Dance because white men once thought of the masked dancers as devils) is part of a ceremonial in which the dancers impersonate the Mountain Spirits. This impersonation is an act of petition to the spirits which dwell in the mountains, asking that they send blessings and healing from sickness.


The dancers' torsos are blackened and covered with painted symbols. Each dancer remains anonymous, his face hidden behind a hood of black buckskin. On his head is the crown that is a work of art. Intricate in detail and magnificent with color, the crowns are often two feet in height, wider than the dancers shoulders, and sometimes shaped not unlike a candelabra.


Most of the dance is done with a vigorous hopping step from a semi-crouch position. Each dancer carries a sword of yucca wood in each hand which he holds outward from flexed elbows. The dance is highly stylized and the motions are angular, with the swords jerking stiffly and the headdresses rattling to the raucous-sounding chant. At times the dancers give the weird call of the hoot owl., a sacred bird to the Apaches. This can be heard midway through the record. Listen for the famous Apache rhythm - pounded out on a "water drum". This could be - and often is - an old gasoline can, filled with water with canvas or buckskin bout taut across the top.

Apache
Buffalo Dance L. Shebaba, Mallon, R. Gasper, Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico This is a hold-over from olden times when a buffalo dance was held to encourage buffalo to come to the Pueblo. In Indian culture, the buffalo was much desired - not only as a source of food, but also because this roamer of the plains was thought to bring the snow which renewed the fields.


The Zuni buffalo dance was held to celebrate a successful hunt. The singers and dancers brought a live buffalo to the plaza of the village and honored him by singing and talking to him.


Now the buffalo is represented by a dancer wearing a massive buffalo head mask. The dance is beautiful to behold as the dancers execute the steps in gay costumes with strings of multi-colored eagle feathers down their backs from head to heel.


The appeal of Zuni music is in its contrasts - the changes of tempo and the variety of sound. Note the sound of the buffalo himself breaking into the song, and the repeated call to the buffalo "Hi-ho, Dinna!"

Zuni
Love Song Oglala Sioux Singers; Willie Horncloud, Ben Sitting Up, and Frank Afraid of Horses, Pine Ridge, South Dakota Here is a Sioux love song, interesting both for its fine Sioux melody and for the way in which it is presented.


This is a folk song, and the singer is represented as a man who has just come from the home of his sister-in-law. She has told him of her love for him, and hinted that he should have married her instead of her sister.


On his way home, the man's thoughts are filled with this strange conversation, and he sings over again to himself the love words which his sister-in-law has spoken to him.


It is night, and his path home takes him through the woods. The owls hoot at him, and the coyotes howl. His walk home is made realistic on the record as the other singers enact the roles of the owls and the coyotes.

Sioux
Horse Tail Dance Fred Romero with Taos Singers, Taos Pueblo, New Mexico Clowning is international, and no album of Indian songs and chants would be complete without a "fun" dance. The Indian is not always as reserved as he appears to strangers; he has a wonderful sense of humor, and some Indians are given to much practical joking.


This horse tail dance is a comic dance of the Taos Pueblo, presented for entertainment - for the memebers of the village, for tourists, or as a hospitality gesture to visiting Indian tribes. It derives its name from the fact that the dancers have horses' tails tied to their waists behind them. The are able to manipulate these in a variety of burlesques. There seems to be no limit to the inventiveness of the various dancers, who prance about and kick and flourish their tails, improvising as the dance progresses.


There are no set steps or gestures - but the dance itself has a rhythm & an outline of movement which is never lost by any dancer while he carries out the details of his own part.

Taos
Butterfly Dance H. Lomawaima & His Hopi Dancers, Moencopi, Arizona The Butterfly Dance - one of the most famous and spectacular of the Hopi Dances - is a social dance, held after the Harvest, and after the big Snake Dance in August. It is a thanksgiving dance for the harvest, chiefly for the corn crop.


The name, Butterfly Dance, comes in the round-about way: Hopi maidens are called Butterfly Girls because the ancient custom of wearing their hair in whorls on either side of the head gave them a butterfly appearance. In this dance, although men participate, the Hopi maidens are the chief figures. Only young single girls may take part - as many as have costumes and as will learn the intricate dance patterns.


Those in charge of the dance plan the changing figures long in advance, and drill the dancers over and over until perfection is achieved.


The girls choose an uncle or male first cousin to provide the costume. Basically, this is the black wool manto dress, but embellishments are added chiefly in the headdress. Each headdress is of different design - exotic and colorful - and made of cardboard or light wood. In these, each designer follows his own ideas, and no particular design is traditional. Each season new headdresses are made for the occasion.


The dance lasts all day with the same participants, but rest periods or intermissions intersperse the various figures. the girls dance with great decorum and scarcely moving feet, and with eyes cast down modestly. Boys and young men accompany the girls, for this is essentially a dance of youth. The men, however, need not be unmarried. In velvet shirts with fringed, varicolored ribbons hanging down the back, the boys shake rattles and dance by lifting their knees high in a springing step.

Hopi
Fast Cheyenne War Dance Cheyenne Dave Group: T. Nightwalker, D. Osage, & Whiteskunk Sisters, Seiling, Oklahoma At every exhibit of Indian Dancing in modern times, one of the popular groups is the Cheyennes who are noted for their striking colorful costumes and for their spectacular dancing. Among such dances is the extremely fast war dance, characterized by the predominant fast drum beat, by the war yells, and the intricate little steps.


A war dance is a "strutting" dance, showing off the fine physique, the strength of the dancers, and their facility of step and movement. the dancers appear usually with bare torso, dance kirtles, leg bells, feathered back and arm bustles, and magnificently color roches or war bonnets of eagle feathers.


The dance is a carry over from the days when the Cheyennes, like most Plains Indians, were organized into warrior societies, each having its special equipment, dance songs and ceremonial function. Now the war dance is done purely for entertainment and exercises, and is featured in dance contests.

Cheyenne
Navajo Yei-Be-Chai Chant Grey Mountain Yei-Be Chai Team, Grey Mountain, Arizona Here is the very sacred and incredibly weird Night Chant of the Navajo. The "Yei" are the gods of the Navajo, and here the dancers impersonate these gods that the Yei may heal the sick. The dancers wear masks and are grotesque figures to behold as they give forth with their frightening and compelling cry.


Among the Navajo, high-pitched music is believed to have restorative powers. The combination - falsetto with "chant song" is supposed to increase the chances for cure.


The Yei-Be-Chai Chant (of this record) is sung all night long on the last night of a nine day healing ceremony. It is never sung until after the first frost, so the night is probably bitter cold as the ceremony takes place outdoors by a campfire.


A team of masked dancers comes forth, their faces covered with buckskin hoods, their torsos bare to the waist and smeared an ashy gray. In unison they lift their hands; in the left is a sprig of evergreen, the symbol of everlasting life; in the right a rattle. Slowly the rattling begins. Their feet scrape forward and stamp. Then, abruptly they break into the rhythm of the stamp, and as in one voice they begin the high-pitched cry - the Yei-Be-Chai Chant, the most eerie, the most piercing of all chants.


The first dancers chant about twenty minutes, and then another team starts in freshly. Sometimes three or four teams rotate, for the chant continues uninterrupted till daybreak. The chant has an insistent, urgent note which will not let the gods rest; it must rise to the very top, pulsating into the darkness and into infinity.


No drum is used, but the chant with its forceful insistence is magnificent!

Navajo