Indian Story and Song, from North America — John Shaqi
Indian Story and Song, from North AmericaFletcher, Alice C. (Alice Cunningham)
History
Indian Story and Song, from North America
Fletcher, Alice C. (Alice Cunningham)
Indians of North America -- Folklore; Indians of North America -- Music
[Footnote 12: A careful analysis of hundreds of aboriginal songs,
gathered from the arctic seas to the tropics, shows that in every
instance the line taken by these tones is a chord-line where the tones
are harmonically related to each other. Out of these related tones the
untutored savage has built his simple melodies. The demonstration of
the interesting fact that "the line of least resistance" in music is a
harmonic line was made by my late associate, Professor John Comfort
Fillmore.]
[Music: A PRAYER FOR RAIN.
_Mexico. Tarahumare._
From DR. CARL LUMHOLTZ.]
[Music: SONG.
_British Columbia. Kwakiutl._
PROF. J.C. FILLMORE.]
The creation of that which we know as musical form seems also to be
due to the influence of story upon song. We have already noted how the
directive emotion started the distinctive rhythm and determined the
order of the related tones, and so constructed the motive or theme.
But neither the rhythm nor the simple motive could express the
_movement_ of the dramatic story: hence we find this expressed by the
repetition, modification, and variation of the motive, the growth of
the phrase, the formation of the clause, and the grouping of clauses
into a period,--in fact, the outline of the form upon which all our
culture music is built. Culture music, however, shows an intellectual
control of emotion, a power of musical thinking, the enlarging and
embellishing of musical form,--a form, nevertheless, which we find
outlined, more or less clearly, in the songs of the untutored red man.
The difference between these spontaneous Indian melodies and the
compositions of the modern masters would seem to be not one of kind,
but one of degree.
As these songs are from a race practically without musical
instruments,--for the drum and rattle were used only to accentuate
rhythm,--they are representative of the period when the human voice
was the sole means of musical expression,--a period which antedated
the invention of instruments by an immeasurable time. They prove,
therefore, that musical form was not developed, as has sometimes been
stated, by the use of instruments, but that it took its rise in a
mental necessity similar to that which gave structure to language.
The influence of song upon story is seen in the attempt to bend prose
to a poetic form.
Many Indian songs have no words at all, vocables only being used to
float the voice. On classifying these wordless songs, we discover that
those which are expressive of the gentle emotions have flowing,
breathing vocables, but, where warlike feelings dominate the song, the
vocables are aspirate and explosive. In this determinate use of
vocables we happen upon what seems to represent the most primitive
attempt yet discovered to give intellectual definition in verbal form
to an emotion voiced in rhythm and melody.
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