Search Results

Rattle consisting of small pieces of flint of ritually prescribed shapes and colours used by the Navajo people of the southwestern USA to accompany songs in the Flintway ceremony. The flints are cupped in both hands and shaken to produce a jingling sound. They symbolize the restoration of fractured or dislocated bones as well as the renewal of vitality in general....

Percussion idiophone widely known in the Americas. Examples include the kalukhaq of the Alaskan Inuit and Native Americans of the northwest coast of North America, the cajón of Cuba and Peru, and the Mexican cajón de tapeo, which supposedly developed as a substitute for the tarima (dance platform). Box drums are also played in the Trinidadian shango cult and on other Caribbean islands. The typical cajón is a rectangular wooden box with a soundhole on the back or side; the box is usually large enough for the player to sit on while striking the front (tapa) with the hands or with sticks. Modern innovations include a padded seat on the top, screws for adjusting the timbre, snares that vibrate against the wood, and a pedal-operated striker. In 2001 Peru declared the cajón part of the nation’s cultural patrimony.

Vessel rattle of the Flathead Indians of Montana, USA. It is made by cutting a piece of hide and sewing it into a spherical shape, 7 to 12 cm in diameter, with an extension about 10 cm long to wrap around a wooden handle. The hide is wetted and filled with wet sand, then moulded into shape and allowed to dry, and the sand emptied. Small pebbles are inserted as rattle elements, and the handle is secured to the base of the body. Normally the rattle is not decorated either with feathers or paint. When used for the ‘begging around camp’ ceremony it is called ...

Rattle of the Aztec (Nahua) people of pre-Contact Mexico. It was a three-legged clay vase with clay pellets inside the hollow legs. The name also refers to other clay vessels containing seeds, stones, or other pellets. According to Molina (Vocabulario en lengua mexicana, 1571), cacalachtli (‘to sound’) denotes any clay receptacle containing pellets and for ritual use. The ...

Native American tribe also known as Paui (people of the hot springs) that spoke a Uto-Aztecan language and lived in south-central California, south of the San Bernardino Mountains. They live in California, in Riverside and San Diego counties; many live on the Cahuilla or neighboring tribes’ reservations established in the 1870s. Cahuilla native music was typical of Indian musical style in southern California. Almost entirely vocal and highly functional, it consisted of songs sung to accompany the various rituals in Cahuilla life. Song was the basis of the oral tradition, providing a vehicle for the transfer of knowledge and traditional practice from one generation to another. Thus there were songs for rites of passage, such as birth and puberty, and for entrance into certain societies. There were songs for work, play, and gambling, shamanistic songs for healing and to invoke power (for love, competition, and rso on), and priestly songs for commemoration, prayer, and dedication, which were cosmological in nature....

In the Canadian repatriated constitution in 1982, three indigenous groups were identified and recognized as Canada’s “Aboriginal” people: First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. There are approximately one hundred First Nations groups, four Inuit groups, and Métis of mixed indigenous and (generally) European descent. The term “nation” is the norm in Canada in reference to its First Peoples, reflecting the long-term goal of parity of governments. In this article representative nations are designated using spellings chosen by the cultures in question, with common names used in the past in brackets.

Northwest Coast nations along coastal British Columbia include the Kwakwaka’wakw [Kwakiutl], whose dance societies were responsible for theatrical presentations at winter ceremonials (potlatches). Dancers were accompanied by chants and drumming on planks and logs, along with wooden whistles and rattles, often elaborately carved.

The Tłicho [Dogrib] of the Western Subarctic led a nomadic existence between Great Slave and Great Bear Lakes. Male singers played round, single-headed snare drums with unpadded sticks for hand games, where vigorous drumming accompanied songs aimed at distracting the person guessing the location of hidden object(s)....

Guitar-like plucked chordophone of the Huichol (Wixáritari or Wirr’ariki) people of west-central Mexico. It is slightly larger than a violin. Typically the soundbox, neck (with four to six frets), nut, and pegboard are carved from a single piece of wood, and a thin piece of cedar serves as a soundtable; the soundbox is only slightly waisted or even oval. A bridge is attached to the soundtable using glue from a local plant. The four or five strings can be of metal, monofilament nylon, or gut. It is played with the ...

[č’tuá]

Suspension rattle of the Flathead people of Montana, USA. It is a stick about 100 cm long with 20 to 25 split deer hoofs and dewclaws tied near the top. It is carried during the winter spirit dance and medicine dance, when it is struck against the ground to the beat of the song....

[chancega, cancega](Lakota: ‘wood kettle’)

Generic Sioux Indian term for frame drums. The term refers both to single- and double-headed drums used in personal, powwow, and ceremonial settings, while čháŋčheğa miméla refers specifically to the hand drum. Historic Euro-American accounts often refer to the large drums as war drums; however, this is a misconception as specific drums did not exist for this purpose. Lakota construction methods and materials are representative of traditional drummaking in the Northern Great Plains. A likely predecessor of the Lakota frame drum was a solitary hoop of bent branches with no drum head, played by striking the hoop with a beater. This idiophonic frame was a talismanic object employed by healers and shamans. After idiophonic frames, longitudinally split and bent sections of wood with increased structural integrity for supporting a drum head were used. The two ends were overlapped and lashed with sinew and hide passing through holes cut through the wood. Later, vegetal twine, iron tacks, and wire replaced or were used to repair lapped joints. The use of cross-sections of hollowed trees is common in larger powwow drums, but smaller handheld drums sometimes employed this method. Other lumber, typically from discarded shipping crates, provided wood of ideal thickness and length for use as bent drum frames, and other collected materials, such as large snapping turtle shells, large iron hoops, small shipping crates, wooden buckets, and cast iron kettles were used as drum frames or bodies....

[Čłxwa]

End-blown flute of the Flathead Indians of Montana, USA. Often called a courting flute, it is made from elderberry or fir and is about 45 cm long and 2 cm in diameter. The soft elderberry pith is burnt out with a heated metal rod and six ésłxlox (fingerholes) are burnt near the middle of the instrument, the distance between them determined by hand position. A small slit near the top of the flute is partially filled with pitch directing the air against the edge of the opening. Traditionally it is not decorated, but some Flatheads have adopted decorated vertical Chinese flutes as substitutes....

[Chahta]

Native American tribe from the Southeastern United States who speak a Muskogean language; their ancestors belonged to the Mississippian culture known for building massive earthen mounds which they used as ceremonial sites. At the time of European contact the Choctaw lived in central and southern Mississippi and southwestern Alabama. They were the first tribe removed from the Southeast by the US federal government, beginning in 1830. Some remained in the South, but most resettled in what is now the state of Oklahoma. With a population of 160,000, the Choctaw are among the largest tribes in North America. Three groups have received federal recognition: the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, and the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians (Louisiana). The MOWA Band of Choctaw Indians is recognized by the state of Alabama. Other Choctaw population centers include Texas, California, Oregon, and Illinois. Choctaw musical culture includes diverse traditional styles, such as songs to accompany social dances, fiddle tunes to accompany house dances, and Choctaw-language Christian hymns....