Native American Music Shoshone' title='Native American Music Shoshone' />Native American music Britannica. Aspects of style. The following discussion of styles and genres by region addresses a number of characteristics of music and how they are produced. It is possible to speak of musical regions because, although each Native American group has distinctive musical styles and genres, certain musical similarities exist between those who are roughly neighbours. However, musical boundaries continually shift and change as people from different cultures exchange musical ideas, repertories, and instruments. Generally, in each regional category a description of the music encompasses vocal style, melody, rhythm, phrase structure, use of text, typical instruments, and occasions for music. Vocal style may be said to be tense requiring greater muscular effort or relaxed to varying degrees, depending on the use of the throat, tongue, mouth, and breath. Higher notes for a particular voice type often sound more tense than notes in the middle of a singers vocal range. The sound may be nasal or not. Rfactor 2 F1 2011 there. Men especially may use falsetto voice, for a higher timbre than is available using full voice. Vibrato is a rapid, slight variation in pitch that may be ornamental and is often part of the aesthetic of musical performance. Native American Music Shoshone' title='Native American Music Shoshone' />This is a list of Native American musicians and singers. They are notable musicians and singers, who are from Peoples indigenous to the contemporary United States. Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples from the regions of North America now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts. Festival-Dancers-1-708x398-640x480.jpg' alt='Native American Music Shoshone' title='Native American Music Shoshone' />When people sing together, they may perform the same melodies in very nearly the same way blended unison or without attempting to sing exactly together unblended unison. Choral singing may also entail the simultaneous performance of separate musical lines polyphony. Scales may be described by the number of discrete pitches used, as well as by the intervals between those pitches. Melodies formcontours as they move higher or lower in pitch, proceeding by relatively large or small intervals. Rhythm encompasses the underlying musical pulses and how they are organized i. Melodic and rhythmic units organize into larger phrases and then into phrase patterns that involve repetition, variation, and contrast. Meaningful text and vocables may be sung in varying combinations. Each region uses characteristic musical instruments, sometimes without voices, and each uses music in identifiable wayse. North America. North American Indians i. Canada and the United States emphasize singing, accompanied by percussion instruments such as rattles or drums, rather than purely instrumental music. North American musical genres include lullabies, songs given to individuals by their guardian spirits, curing songs, songs performed during stories, songs to accompany games, ceremonial and social dance songs, and songs to accompany work or daily activities. Music, dance, and spirituality are tightly interwoven in a worldview that perceives little separation between sacred and secular. Six musical style areaswhich differ somewhat from anthropologists designationsexist in Native North America Eastern Woodlands including Northeast and Southeast Indians, Plains, Great Basin, Southwest, Northwest Coast, and Arctic. Eastern Woodlands. In terms of musical characteristics, the Eastern Woodlands area stretches from New Brunswick, Canada, south to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Mississippi River east to the Atlantic Ocean. The large area was the traditional home of a diverse array of peoples, including the Iroquois, Huron, and Ojibwa to the north and the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Cherokee, and Seminole to the south. Eastern Woodlands singers use a relatively relaxed vocal style and emphasize the middle part of their range. In some songs singers use special vocal techniques, including rapid vibrato and yodeling, which enhance the expressive quality of the music. Most scales involve four, five, or six tones, usually with notes at roughly equidistant intervals. Melodies tend to undulate and often feature a descending inflection rhythmic characteristics include frequent changes of metre and the use of syncopation. The most distinctive style element of Eastern Woodlands music is the use of call and response in many dance songs the leader sings a short melody as a solo and is answered by the dancers in unison. The alternation between leader and dancers creates an antiphonal texture that is otherwise rare among North American Indians. See alsoantiphonal singing. Sniper Elite V1 Multiplayer Crack Game more. Eastern Woodlands songs feature strophic forms, in which the music repeats sectional forms, in which the music changes in blocks and iterative forms, in which there may be short sections with repetition. Song texts employ vocables or words framed by vocables. Musical instruments from this region include rattles, drums, and a few flutes used primarily for ritual purposes. Eastern Woodlands peoples perform traditional musics to accompany ceremonial dances, such as the Green Corn ceremony of the Southeast or Iroquois Longhouse events of the Northeast. In addition, traditional songs accompany individual curing rituals, recreational social dances, and public folkloric dance demonstrations. Plains. The Plains area extends from Texas north to south central Canada and from the Rocky Mountains east to the Mississippi River. Peoples from this area include the Blackfoot and Sioux of the northern plains, the Kiowa and Comanche of the southern plains, and the Ho Chunk Winnebago, Sauk, and Fox of the prairie. The most distinctive stylistic feature of this area is the tense, nasal vocal quality cultivated by Plains singers. Musicians from the northern Plains emphasize the high part of their range, while southern Plains singers use a somewhat lower range. Most scales employ four or five tones with equidistant intervals. Plains songs feature a cascading melodic contour that starts high and descends by steps, ending on the lowest pitch at the end of the strophe. In powwow dance songs seebelow, the tempo used by the singers differs slightly from the tempo of the drumbeat, which adds rhythmic complexity to the music. Singers perform in unblended unison, and most songs use a kind of strophic form that is repeated four times. Song texts may be composed entirely of vocables or may include a combination of words and vocables. Instruments from this region include the single headed hand drum, the large bass drum used simultaneously by multiple performers to accompany powwow songs, and the end blown flute or flageolet, played as a solo instrument for courtship music. Music is performed for collective ceremonies such as the Sun Dance, mens warrior society dances, rituals associated with sacred objects such as medicine bundles, and recreational events such as hand games e. Great Basin. Tribes such as the Shoshone, Paiute, Washo, and Ute live in the Great Basin area, which reaches from the Colorado River Basin north to the Fraser River in British Columbia, Canada, and from the Rocky Mountains west to the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range. Musicians from this region emphasize the middle part of the vocal range and sing with a relaxed and open quality special vocal techniques include subtle aspirations at the start and end of musical phrases. Scales feature four or five tones with mostly equidistant intervals. Melodic contours undulate, sometimes with a descending inflection, and singers achieve rhythmic complexity through special breathing techniques they use to vary durational values. Singers perform collective dance songs in moderately blended unison, and some dance songs are unaccompanied, which is unusual among Indians in North America.