ojibwe music #6

Another (shorter) quotation from the article on Ojibwe music that I found in Gilfillan's scrapbook. It follows on from the material on rhythm and harmony that I posted earlier. The title of this section is 'Rules of Indian Music':

One of the rules of Indian music is that a song begins on a high note and ends on a low one. We usually reach our climaxes in art music by just the opposite process. To its own rules Ojibway music generally conforms, but among the comparatively few examples studied there are striking exceptions, one song in particular ending in the most spirited manner on a high note. Another rule is in regard to the scale which, with most tribes, is limited to five notes. The omitted intervals are usually the fourth and seventh; some of the Ojibway songs have the seventh as a passing note, and some include the fourth on the accented part of the measure. It will occasion no surprise to discover native songs in which every note of the scale is employed. How much missionary influence, exerted over a series of generations, has had to do with the making of Indian songs cannot be asserted, but various circumstances suggest that the music is practically undefiled. The melodies unquestionably are very ancient. No one appears to know where or when they originated, but it is certain that they have been handed down by oral tradition for many generations. It is not a wild dream that many of the identical songs of Longfellow's Chibiabos are reproduced annually on the shore of Lake Huron.

So here we have more of that speculation about how 'pure' the present state of Native American music is and how much is owed to contact with missionaries. Actually, it made me think of something you said last summer about the term 'authenticity'. A practice is authentic if its practitioners see it as such...