MUSIC 26AC Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Pow Wow
Pow-Wow August , 7
• Pow-wow: intertribal Native American social gatherings built around a shared repertoire of songs and
dances (Perea 18)
o Native American: refers to indigenous people in America
o American Indian: original inhabitants of the United States
o Music and dance forms the links among the tribal lines
• Purpose: highlight native non-native encounters
o US government repression
o Wild West shoes
o Tradition surviving in secret: cultural repression of cultural practices – holding onto
something that has been a historical piece in Native American culture/interaction in the Wild
West shows
▪ Pow-wows were kept alive
o 1950s relocation to urban centers
• It is a space for engagement and asking questions
o Not frozen in time; has historical roots but can adapt and change over time for successive
generations of participants to engage in the future
• Music as a social activity (engagement between people)
• Four sides of the pow-wow
o Drums (center): the heart beat; people gravitating towards the sound/central pulse and is
uniting everyone that is hearing the drum
o Male singers
o Female singers: mother role is crucial to culture
o Dancers and community
• Northern Plains vs. Southern Plains style
o Northern plains: higher pitch and faster beat
o Southern plains: lower pitch and slower beat
• Musical elements
o Drums: beat/pulse
o Honor beats: some drummers hit some of the notes stronger
o Voice: typically starts solo, then harmony
• Musical definitions
o Sonority: quality of sound of a note in a particular place in a song
o Tone:
▪ Timbre: unique quality of a sound; tone color (ie: what makes a clarinet different
than a flute)
▪ Duration
▪ Dynamics
o Texture: overall sound created by a blend of instruments, including voices
▪ Instrumentation
▪ Monophonic: one voice making noise (ie: solo flute)
▪ Heterophonic: one melody, but multiple voices engaged with the melody (ie: 3 or 4
flutes)
▪ Homophonic: voices moving together but on different notes
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