Research Items

Abstract

AMERICAN INDIAN Music.—Miss Frances Densmore, the well-known student of the music of the American Indian, and author of a number of monographs on the music of specific tribes, has published in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, Vol. 18, No. 14, a study of the general characteristics of Indian music based upon more than 1700 songs which she has collected since she began work in 1893. With the American Indian, music is not an art in our sense of the term, but primarily a means by which he believes that he can put himself in communication with the mysterious forces of the earth, sea, and air, to which he looks with awe and reverence in his daily life. It was therefore used primarily in the working of magic and the treatment of the sick. Nor was it based originally on the tones produced by an instrument. Only the correct version of a song is recognised by the Indian. It must be repeated absolutely accurately. A repetition has been found not to vary in tempo, pitch, and note values after an interval of two years. The analysed songs do not suggest a resemblance to the songs of Asiatic or European countries, though the Indians themselves recognise two classes of songs. The second class shows what appears to be Spanish, Roman Catholic, or Russian Church influence. Collective analysis shows a perception of simple ratios of vibration, but these tones are frequently used in what may be termed an interval-formation of melody, which does not suggest a keynote, and has no counterpart in our musical usage.