Beyond the Classroom: Indigenous American and African Cultures

One thing we saw briefly while watching the “Powwow Experience” video was a depiction of the Native American Eagle Dance. It looked really elaborate and beautiful so I decided I wanted to learn a bit more about it for this blog. Many sources illustrate the importance of eagles, not just in individual tribes, but among Native American culture as a whole. In many tribes, eagles are thought to represent the sun. They’re primary figures in many Native American legends and are widely believed to have supernatural powers, such as the ability to control the weather and carry messages to the gods. Because of this, they’re often admired and worshipped similarly to the way a god would be and are included in many spiritual rituals. Eagle feathers specifically are viewed as the conveyors of prayers to the heavens. These feathers are considered venerable and aren’t meant to touch the ground. They’re also used to make ceremonial objects and are often included in rituals, such as the Eagle Dance. 

The Eagle Dance is often celebrated in spring (based on weather patterns rather than calendrical designations). More specifically, it’s performed when tribes are seeking divine intervention or help from a higher power (for example, to cure illness or ask for rain). The ritual consists of different songs and dances performed consecutively, which convey the eagle’s life cycle, including its birth, how it learns to walk and hunt, and its death. These things are presented through actions like turning, flapping, and swaying. Dancers wear clothes that represent the colors and appearance of eagles. Paint and feathers are applied to the arms, legs, and bodies, along with caps that have feathers and a yellow beak. 

However, the Eagle Dance is performed among many tribes, including the Iroquois, Comanche, Midwestern Calumet, and more. So, naturally, the dance does vary slightly from tribe to tribe. Within the Navajo tribe, it’s used to pray for more eagles, and the Eagle Dancer is honored and presented with a variety of gifts. The Jemez and Tesuque tribes perform the Dance with two people representing the eagles (one man and one woman). However, the Comanche’s Eagle Dance includes only one dancer, who is meant to represent the son of a chieftain who became an eagle after death.

The first video below shows a more traditional representation of the Eagle Dance by the Jemez Pueblo tribe referenced above. As mentioned, it features two dancers representing the eagles. The second video is a slightly more modern take that incorporates some music in English with a mixture of vocables and lyrics in a Native language. Despite the differences, both dances feature the typical feather wings and swaying movements common to the ritual.

Another thing I was interested in was the origination of the panpipes in the Andes mountains and the fact that they were invented completely distinctly from those in ancient Greece. I found that they’re believed to have likely developed in the Aymara culture of the Lake Titicaca region, specifically Peru. There are three Peruvian cultures that have been identified as the likely earliest users of the panpipes. These include the Nasca culture (1,100 BC - 750 AD), the Paracas (600 BC - 175 BC), and the Moche (100 AD - 800 AD). In the Aymaran language, the panpipes are traditionally referred to as “siku”, while in Quechuan and Spanish they’re called “antara” and “zampoña”, respectively. As the instrument spread from region to region, it began to vary in size and design. In ancient times the panpipes were made out of bone, condor feathers, and clay, but these materials have since been replaced with bamboo. Today, sikus are made from various types of bamboo, each of which has different tonal characteristics. On average, these instruments have about 13 pipes, but the amount can vary to include more or fewer notes. The panpipes are still considered to be key characteristics of many ceremonies today, and the rondador (a set of chorded pipes that produce two tones simultaneously) is the national instrument of Ecuador. The rondador specifically is believed to be a post-Colombian invention because it follows a chromatic scale that was unknown to the Incas.

I went through a few of the covers made by the artists in the channel featured below but decided this was one of the ones I liked most because it features two different sets of panpipes that produce slightly different sounds. It also showed how the panpipes can be played in conjunction with a variety of other instruments, as well as how they can create both extremely breathy and very intense sounds depending on mouth position and movement.

Linguistics is another topic that’s really interesting to me so I was excited to learn more about the way Africa’s tonal languages influence its music. In sub-Saharan Africa, most languages are tonal. In the Bantu language of Shona, meaning varies based on the specific tones used for words. In terms of music, It’s been found that, in general, language has a big role in musical organization, and inflections are important to the development of melodies. Individuals who speak tonal languages have been found to be better at distinguishing the musical notes of various sounds without having any actual musical notes for reference. 

African tonal languages specifically have been understudied throughout history. A 2021 study by Kathryn Franich and Ange B. Lendja Ngnemzué studies traditional folk songs in the Bantu language of Medʉmba, spoken in Cameroon. In terms of phonemes, Medʉmba only presents a tonal distinction between high and low tones. The findings of this study showed that differences in rhythm depended on the voices and the parts of the song being considered. Drummers had more flexibility to deviate from the consistent pulse than the other percussion instruments. As these songs often consist of call and response, it was also shown that the master drummer (caller) had more flexibility during sung portions than those responding to them did. Despite these smaller differences, they found that there were significant connections between song structure and linguistic characteristics during sung portions of the folk songs. Other sources have found that “nonsense syllables” are often used to form patterns in the instrumental rhythms of African music. Speakers of these tonal languages can also communicate over long distances and, historically, this has been done using drums that imitate certain African tonal patterns.

The first video below shows some specific examples. If the concept is a bit challenging to understand in terms of African languages, this presenter provides an example of how tonal differences occur in English as well, with the terms present vs. present. They also showed two different sentences in the western Nigerian language of Yoruba and the way emphasis on certain parts of certain words changed the meaning of the sentences that were made up of what looked like the exact same words. This specific researcher found that correlation between tone and music was stronger in traditional music than in contemporary types.

The tonal language concept is displayed in African languages in the videos below by performers using talking drums, which we already learned a bit about in class. I liked the first video because it provided a lyrical translation in English to go along with the song but the second performance is a bit more exciting in my opinion. It's hard to understand how it follows any sort of tonal language without a translation in any language but I think it shows a fun performance of the talking drum regardless!

References:

Andean Lodges. (2019, October 16). The Andean panpipe: Its origins and enduring music. https://andeanlodges.com/en/the-andean-panpipe-its-origins-and-enduring-music/

Coles, M. (2016, March 11). Eagle Dance display. Center for the Study of World Religions. https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/news/2016/03/11/eagle-dance-display

Farlex. (n.d.). Eagle Dance. The Free Dictionary. https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Eagle+Dance

Franich, K. H., & Lendja Ngnemzué, A. B. (2021). Feeling the beat in an African tone language: Rhythmic mapping between language and music. Frontiers in Communication. https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.653747

Kachina House. (2017, January 6). History of the Eagle Dance. https://blog.kachinahouse.com/history-of-the-eagle-dance/#comments

Native Flutes Walking. (n.d.). Panpipes of the Americas. http://www.nativefluteswalking.com/panpipes-andean-american.shtml

wa Mukunu, K. (1996). The impact of African music and language on the music creative process in Americas. Community Development Library. http://www.nzdl.org/cgi-bin/library?e=d-00000-00---off-0cdl--00-0----0-10-0---0---0direct-10---4-------0-0l--11-en-50---20-about---00-0-1-00-0-0-11----0-0-&a=d&c=cdl&cl=CL1.62&d=HASHa9cb68fb0a46beb618f7eb.8.3

Woman of the World. (2018, July 30). The most musical languages in the world: What is a tonal language? Asian Absolute. https://asianabsolute.co.uk/blog/2018/07/30/the-most-musical-languages-in-the-world-what-is-a-tonal-language/