Please see the sidebar accompanying Chapter 3 for biographical information on Nick Spitzer. This essay originally appeared in the program guide for the 1994 Folk Masters concert series, held March 11-April 16 at the Barns of Wolf Trap in Vienna, Virginia.
Native American music shows enormous diversity based on tribe, culture, and region. At the same time there is a deep similarity, due in many cases to the group-focused nature of performance and the ritual and festival settings in which it occurs. A more recent factor that favors unity of style is the pan-Indian influence that has produced powwow music based largely in the "big drum" format associated with the Great Plains. An equally significant force for individual diversity has been the emergence in the last two decades of many solo performers who have moved from traditional to pop and country music or avant-garde. Yet a balance remains between traditionalists and more transformed performance styles. Our program covers some of these many musical and cultural possibilities, drawing from southwestern and northern tribal music traditions. Included are Navajo, Mohican, and Métis. The range of performance practice runs from solo drumming, song, and flute-playing to guitar-accompanied singing and fiddling, to powwow chanting and drumming.
The Navajo are the largest tribe in the United States, with about 190,000 people on their vast reservation that covers 25,000 square miles of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. They have resided in this land of desert, mountains, canyons, and forests since between A.D. 1000 and 1525, and the terrain is often mentioned in songs that refer to sacred locations and events that happened in particular places. The Navajo Nation is a mix of rural sheep farmers, professional artists, tribal administrators, forestry workers, ranchers, and many others. The Navajo performers come from the small settlements of Ganado and Steamboat, Arizona, about fifty miles west of Window Rock and the nearby border with New Mexico.
The desert area near these towns is composed of rolling hills, rock mesas, canyons, and massive vistas of rising terrain that seem to defy gravity. At small crossroads stores, one sees signs for country music shows and powwows. The radios in stores and gas stations are set to KTNN, the voice of the Navajo Nation, which broadcasts from Window Rock in both Navajo and English, and is as likely to play Merle Haggard as the songs of our featured singer, Davis Mitchell.
Waiting to meet Davis one afternoon in Ganado, I stood around talking with older Navajo men who wore cowboy hats, dark green shades, and gold in their teeth. In contrast, the women wore long dresses, scarves over their heads, and abundant turquoise jewelry. Davis Mitchell—medicine man, singer, and rodeo cowboy—showed up around sundown. His wife and four children were in tow.
Davis, who is currently the hottest solo singer and drummer on the reservation, is also a sandpainter. It's something he began doing around 1982. The paintings are traditionally the work of medicine men. Davis obtains sand for colors—red, yellow, orange, black, turquoise, purple—by going to the Painted Desert, to craft shops, and also to brickyards where fine-grained red dust may be found. He says:
The sandpaintings started from medicine men. And medicine men use the sun, father of the sun, or mother earth, or many types of designs like snake, like horses, bear, and corn. I don't reveal or sell the traditional designs because later on down in the future you can be hurt by it. That's what our medicine men believe.
Mitchell has been pulled in varied directions in his life, between following the medicine path of his father and uncle, and trying to gain success as a rodeo cowboy and country singer. Singing Navajo songs of his own making to entertain in the Indian community allows him to exist somewhat in both worlds. Navajo ceremonial life is quite active and music is often used to help restore good health, balance, and serenity hózhó, or "harmonious conditions"). In his own life he has been part of ceremonials where his health has been sung over all night while he was piled under blankets. Receiving a rattle as part of the ceremonial confirmed his role as a medicine man who could similarly heal others and bring them into balance.
Mitchell recalls his life at that time:
I was a bull rider before. That's how I started, late in my high school days, in junior rodeo. After I got out of high school I bought me a membership card in Rodeo Cowboy Association. And I got in there for four years, I got hurt bad. The bull really hurt me, stepped on me, and kind of pulled me around for awhile. And then the doctor told me to stay off. And I was off for maybe seven months or six months and then I really thought that I didn't
really care what doctor told me, and I just went back in and started again. And then late that year I really hit the ground, and I got knocked out. And that's the time I got sick again. And they told me, and the doctor told me, that time, you're going to die young, if you don't believe me, just take it.
After a difficult passage, Davis' dying father convinced him to follow the medicine way to look out for his family and the future of the Navajos. He predicted that through his music and medicine Davis would be widely known among the Navajos.
Hopi Music
A Hopi in Two Musical Worlds
Jacob Coin, composer and musician, is a member of the Tobacco Clan, Hopi Nation, from Kykotsmovi Village, Third Mesa. He also represents Hopi interests in Washington, D.C. In 2000, after serving first as executive director of the Arizona Gaming Association and then as executive director of the National Indian Gaming Association, Coin assumed the post of executive director of the California Nations Indian Gaming Association. The following essay was originally published in the 1992 Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife program guide.
When our people first emerged onto this, the Fourth World, they came upon Massau, guardian of this world. Our people asked to live here and were given permission to do so with certain conditions. Massau instructed that to live here we must adopt four basic guides for our lives. First, we must have na wakinpi (prayer), a way of communicating with our Creator. Second, we must have tup 'tseuni (a religion) for spiritual guidance. Third, Massau said we must have ka 'tsi (a culture), a way of life that distinguishes us from others. Finally, Massau said we must have navo'ti (prophecy) to guide our people into the future.
Massau might also have instructed the people that to live in balance in the Fourth World, we must have music and song as a vehicle for integrating the four basic guides into our lives. As long as humanity has been here, music and song have been a primary means of teaching and learning the ways of the Fourth World.
As a young boy, I came to expect songs of the kachina to be a vehicle for learning the ways of the Hopi. (The kachina are god-like ancestral spirit beings who figure significantly in the ritual ceremonies of the Hopi and other Pueblo peoples.) Their songs told of the virtues of waking before sunrise and giving prayers, of having a
good heart and respect for the environment and all living things. We understand that these virtues and others are basic to the Hopi way. At a young age all Hopi learn that teaching is one of the many roles music and song have in traditional Hopi life.
Universally among Indians, music is a part of the social environment, a medium for teaching the ways of tribal life, and a means of passing tribal and clan histories from one generation to the next. It is an instrument for learning the natural order of the world and of the universe and for understanding humanity's relationship with the earth and other living things. Indian people use music and song as a guide and a gauge for social conscience; music and song keep tribal mores and social expectations visible for all of the people. Music has certainly always been a key to spiritual growth among Indian and Native peoples. Above all, music is an invaluable entertainment medium and food for the heart and soul for all mankind.
For the most part, contemporary Indian and other Native musicians and songwriters accept and remain true to the traditional roles of music. For the contemporary Native musician, music is more than simply entertainment. Like their ancestors, today's Native artists agree that a commitment to music in its role as teacher is an important responsibility to be upheld.
Being a Hopi Indian and a musician/songwriter, I find guidance and inspiration for my music in traditional Hopi roots. I experiment with a matrix of techniques in using traditional Native musical forms and styles to create contemporary songs. In the end, I believe that traditional music and contemporary music are extensions of each other. The primary challenge is to bridge the gap between traditional and modern music effectively.
I have tried to do this by three methods. First, I pull the meaning of a traditional song into a contemporary piece by translating the song's lyrics into English and then composing a melody and defining a beat that conveys the meaning of the song as it was originally intended by the traditional composer. This is perhaps the easiest method, since it amounts to composing new music for existing lyrics without having to be faithful to the all-important original melody.
Second, I score a traditional song in its entirety for Western instrumentation, including guitar, piano, vocals, and the like. In this process I try to be faithful to the original melody, which is often difficult because traditional songs are composed solely for voice, and instrumentation often cannot exactly replicate notes produced by the human voice.
Third, I weave traditional songs together with contemporary musical forms, allowing both to express themselves in the composition. This practice is most innovative—and preferred—since it allows an artist complete freedom to create new music and new songs utilizing both influences.
For the most part, the drum was the primary instrument for Native music. Over time, drums were supplemented with flutes and rattles of various kinds. As the use of these instruments evolved, so did traditional music. The pattern of this evolution is created by traditional music's continual reaching out to embrace its developing contemporary relative.
Other instruments besides the drum have become accepted vehicles for the musical thoughts of Native artists. Guitar and other stringed instruments, flutes, and various percussion instruments have become the norm in the orchestration of contemporary Native songs.
What would really rock (and shock!) our ancestors would be the revolution brought by electrified instruments and electronic special effects. Of all Native musicians and songwriters, Keith Secola (Ojibwa) of Phoenix, Arizona, and Buddy Red Bow (Oglala Sioux) of Pine Ridge, South Dakota, have been most successful in maintaining the integrity of Native sound patterns while expanding on them with electric instrumentation and special effects.
Ronald Smith of Minneapolis, Minnesota, a Mandan/Hidatsa traditional singer/composer with the Eagle Whistle Drum, suggests that the inevitable evolution of music, both Native and contemporary, is a good reflection of social change at any given time. Without judging it, Ron describes contemporary music as a snapshot of society. According to Ron, the evolution of Indian music reflects the dynamism of Indian peoples. "We are not a people even close to extinction," he says.
Has traditional music changed? It has really evolved. Traditional music has reached out and touched the twenty-first century. The fortunate result for both worlds is that Native musicians still understand and value the many social roles of music. Native musicians will continue to compose songs that have meaning, that have their genesis in traditional ideas and inspirations. Native musicians are to be recognized, just as their ancient predecessors have been, as teachers of thought conveyed through music and song.
Massau surely knew the importance of music in the Fourth World. He would never have insisted on people having Prayer, Religion, Culture, and Prophecy without assuming music as a medium for carrying them forward. Good for us, music continues to fill our hearts and minds with the good things of the Fourth World.
Jacob Coin
Navajo music is generally divided between sacred forms and popular styles, though some of the latter may also be used for ceremonials. The sacred music is usually composed of long narrative texts dealing with creation, morality, and philosophical topics accompanied by group chorus, rattles, and drumming. The popular styles, which may be recorded and performed in public, are often for personal use to accompany herding, corn grinding, and other work or play activities. They may also be about people, patriotism, and parts of such ritualized events as the Squaw Dance or Night way and Enemyway ceremonials.
Davis Mitchell's song style includes vocables (untranslatable syllables) and words linked together by falsetto leaps and steady chanting. He plays a small water drum and sings self-composed songs that may be honor songs, flag songs, or birthday songs. Some love songs, with titles like "Beautiful Girl from Afar" and "I'll Be There Unexpectedly" have earned him the title "The Navajo George Strait." Davis warms to the comparison, and enjoys his ability to be a singer in two worlds: "I dress up country all the time. Especially when I'm going to go entertain. I wear my trophy buckle, I wear my hat, and I walk out. I entertain, and maybe some people come around, 'Hey, help us,' they say, 'you're a medicine man.' Okay, I take off my belt, my buckle, my hat, put on the moccasin, and get a Pendleton blanket (for a healing ceremonial), there it is, being an Indian."
As is true throughout the country, big drum powwow style is popular in the Navajo Nation. Davis Mitchell is a member of a powwow group called Black Star Nation. To reach the homes of most of its singers one travels a few miles from the small settlement of Steamboat until a canyon veers off to the north at a jagged angle. At the entrance to the canyon is a wedge-shaped field of corn, waiting for rain. A maze of dusty trails leads back to a series of houses. Most are the traditional hogans, eight-sided and of log or board construction plastered with wattle and daub. Most are colored brown or salmon with thatched roofs and, occasionally, tarpaper.
I meet Jackson Gorman, the leader of the Navajo powwow group Black Star Nation Singers, near his house. His wife Orlinda and nephew Emmett Shorty are also part of the group. They are waiting for other nephews to return from a sweat lodge ceremonial and are all readying for a Squaw Dance that will be held tomorrow in the next canyon over. Drinking coffee and watching babies crawl around in the plywood house, Emmett Shorty says:
We pray to Black Star, and that's where we got our name from. Our old people, like our grandpas and our parents, when they pray to the stars, they say Black Star is our traditional name, so that's what we call our drum singing group. The reason why I do that is because I respect my elderlies and my great grandparents and my father's side and my mom's side. That's the way I am.
As the sky overhead fills with stars, we move outside into a little yard fenced for dogs, sheep, and goats, with a pigeon roost at the back. Dominant on one side of the compound is a large metal satellite dish—currently inoperable—that is a sign of status and allows the incongruity of seeing local television from the world over in this modest house in a remote canyon. As the various nieces and nephews assemble for singing, Jackson Gorman says, "We sing what we call fancy songs. We compose them ourselves, in Navajo. One describes a nice way of dancing to please Mother Earth."
Gathering about the big drum, they also sing of the Navajo captivity at Fort Sumner in 1864 and then move on to love songs, including those of Davis Mitchell, who has chosen to dignify the occasion by wearing a tuxedo T-shirt. After a break for sodas in the dusty air, Emmett, Jackson, and Davis stand up to sing together with handheld octagonal
drums. These are used for the Owl Dance and Round Dance in ceremonials, but now they are singing a new love song called "Who's Been Holding You Tight?"
Jackson Gorman became interested in powwow in the mid-1980s. He had been dancing to the various regional styles when he was encouraged one day to start singing and beating the drum. Black Star Nation, made up of his wife, friends, nieces, and nephews, is the group he formed as a result of his interest. He has also worked with the widely respected Cathedral Lake Singers. Much of the year for Gorman is spent as a section gang worker for the Santa Fe Rail-road. During the warmer weather he travels from Chicago to Los Angeles to Amarillo with an all-Navajo crew that replaces and straightens track, repairing switches or whatever needs doing.
