NAVAJO

CHIEF in Navajo

"One who speaks"

YEIBICHAI songs

"gods-their-grandfathers"-refers to ancestor deities who come to dance at the major ceremonial known as NIGHTWAY

IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF NAVAJO LIFE AND MUSIC

1. Repetitive Narrative Style 2. Importance of Women 3. Traveling About 4. Navajo Practicality 5. The Value of navajo songs: healing the sick, bringing prosperity, and enabling the possessor of certain songs to become a leader in the community 6. Speech and Leadership-WIND is the ultimate power and the voice is the wind made articulate 7. Navajo Humor

The Enemyway Ceremony

1. Shizhanee is used 2. One of the most frequently performed rites in traditional Navajo religion 3. it is a CURING ritual for sicknesses brought on by the ghosts of outsiders who have died. 4. often performed for a returned N. member of the U.S. Armed Forces or for others who have been away from home living among strangers for a long time 5. 2 groups of participants A. the "home camp" B. the "stick receiver's camp"=the enermy and are custodians of a stick decorated with symbols of the warrior deity, ENEMY SLAYER, and of his mother, CHANGING WOMAN, who is the PRINCIPLE NAVAJO DEITY 6. Only time in traditional N. life that men and women dance together=fun and courtship 7. before the dancing there is a concert of SWAY Songs-expresses courtship theme, majority have texts entirely of vocables 8. SIGNAL song indicates the dancing is over and singing starts again 9. ceremony symbolizes WAR 10. group of singers is divided into halves rep. home camp and enemy camp and the halves compete in singing in vigor, repertory and highness of pitch 11. GIFT SONG starts after a breakfast break-gift songs are old and almost entirely in vocables-gifts represent war booty 12. secret war name of the afflicted person is revealed

What are indicators of women's importance in Navajo society?

1. Women choose partners in the Enemyway Ceremony 2. own the household 3. the children belong to the mother's clan (not the father's) 4. when a couple marries the husband traditionally moves in with his wife's family

Traditional Popular Music

1. Yeibichai from Nightway ceremonies 2. Corral Dance songs from several ceremonies ****3.****several different kinds of NDDAA (WAR DANCE) SONGS from Enemyway made up the largest body of traditional popular music--included Circle Dance, Sway, Two-step, Skip Dance, and Gift songs

On the reservation the Navajos' livelihood is based on what?

1. farming 2. raising stock 3. weaving 4. silversmithing

How the Yeibichai singers work.

1. organized in teams made up of men from the same region 2. create new songs or sing old favorites 3. prepare costumes and masks 4. practice a dance of the gods that proceeds in 2 parallel lines with reel-like figures 5. have a clown who follows and dancers and makes everyone laugh with his antics 6. have a competition

What else does this ritual contain?

1. purification by sweating and vomiting 2. making prayer offerings for deities whose presence is thus invoked 3. sandpainting rituals

Navajo concept of illness

1. recognize the disease theory of the EuroAmerican world-use hospitals, surgery, and antibiotics 2. Also see bad dreams, poor appetite, depression and injuries from accidents as results of disharmony with the world of nature. 3. they see animals, birds, insects and the elements of earth, water, wind, and sky as active potencies that directly influence human life-each of these forces may speak directly to human beings and may teach them the songs, prayers, and ritual acts that make up the ceremonials 4. at the center of this relationship with the natural world is the concept of HOZHO

Why are the Mountainway Ceremonial Chants Classic?

1. represent a tradition generations old 2. have enormous scope, one chant can contain over 500 songs and the text comprise many 1000s of lines of religious poetry 3. they contain in their prayers and songs, and in the related myths they present, the meaning the N. find in the natural and supernatural worlds

Characteristics of Yeibichai

1. shouts (like Plains) 2. ornamentation (like Plains) 3. falsetto voices (like Plains) 4. tense energy of the singing (like Plains) 5. long intro sung almost entirely on the basic note (TONIC) (unique to them) 6. Melody leaps up an octave 7. vocables (identifies what kind of song it is) 8. includes the call of the gods, "Yei" themselves (Hi ye, hi ye, ho-ho ho ho!)

NDDAA SONGS (War Dance)

Also known as Squaw Dance Songs but called NDDAA songs instead because Squaw was seen as derogatory

Where did they descend from?

Athabascan-speaking nomadic hunters

CEREMONIAL CHANTS

Long series of songs that accompany ritual procedures such as: Nightway (purifications, prayer offerins, and snadpainting rituals) Enemyway (preparation of the drum and decorated stick, dressing the one-sung- over, and giving him or her power and protection) Mountainway ("classic") performance of the chants may be brief or extended depending on the needs of the one-sung-over about 50 of them dramatize the N. creation story-no one knows the whole story, put together and passed on from ceremonial practitioners, mean and women called SINGERS in N.

NIGHTWAY

Major Navajo ceremony-masked dancers who impersonate the gods bring supernatural power and blessing to help cure a sick person

HOGHAN

Navajo "place home"

the Circle Dance Song: Shizhanee

Nddaa Song (hit tunes of traditional navajo life) Easy to sing for an outsider with some surprises (diff. from Yeibichai) Many sung entirely with vocables-Shizhanee is sung with translatable text does not have the high falsetto which makes it easier to sing (diff. from Y.) nasal tone, characteristic of Navajo singing every phrase ends with he, nai ya, typical of circle dances triple meter, charac. of circle dances Phrase A intros new melodic elements that are expanded in phrase B and then further expanded in phrase C translatable phrase C preceeded and followed by vocables=fave design principle in Navajo music and the other arts, i.e. weaving and silver jewelry design=DYNAMIC SYMMETRY (Whitherspoon) HUMOR

What was the new recreational pasttime in the 1990s?

Songs and Dance--makes use of Skip Dance and Two-step songs and it can take place in any large hall Involves couples of all ages in traditional dress P.53

Where were the Navajo located?

Southwestern Desert

The Sun Dance

The Plains Sun Dance, another Native American religion, was imported to the N. reservation world renewal ceremony important part of the spiritual lives of certain Navajo who practice it

What is the only drum used in traditional Navajo and Apache music?

Water Drum (clay pot+unusual drumstick made of a twig bent around and tied in a loop at the end) DEEP BOOMING SOUND IS MADE VS SOFTER THUMP OF THE NAVAJO DRUM

DINE'

What the Navajos call themselves

SHOOTINGWAY CEREMONY

a ceremonial that reenacts that part of the creation myth in which a hero, Holy young Man, goes in search of supernatural power--taught the ceremonial by the sun to be brought back to earth for the protection of the people

New composers in traditional modes

a recent genre of N. music comprises songs based musically on Enemyway style (usually Sway songs or Dance songs) but not intended for use in that ceremony.--texts are in Navajo because the songs are intended for N. listeners but they contain a different sort of social commentary from that in the popular songs of Enemyway the new message is PROTEST

What are Navajos noted for in their arts?

bold experiments in artistic form

dance plays what role?

ceremonial and courtship and social opportunity

Where does the main part of their income come from now?

coal uranium oil natural gas lumber

What is done with the sandpainting?

contact identifies the one-sung-over with the forces of nature they represent and provides their protective power

What does the sandpainting represent?

depicts the deities

PEYOTE STYLE

distinct pantribal music features of hymns

peyote drum

elaboration on the pot drum of the Navajos and Apaches-a type of water drum

Where does the Native American Church hold their meetings?

in a large Plains Indian tepee, sometimes a hogan because both have: 1. circular form 2. earth floor 3. sacred fire 4. altar

HOZHO

lit. "blessedness, beauty, harmony" This relationship must be maintained and which, if lost, can be restored by means of ritual--the prayers invoke this state over and over at their conclusions

WATER DRUM

made of a small three-legged iron pot with a wet buckskin drumhead stretched over the opening-the pot is full of water, which is splashed over the inside of the drumhead from time to time by giving the drum a tossing motion widespread in North and South America

PEYOTE RATTLE

made with a small gourd mounted on a handle stick in much the same way as the cow-horn rattle of the Iroquois-no carved shelf on the handle-horsehair often died red to symbolize the peyote cactus

Navajo dress - traditional

men dress in western style and women wear skirts and blouses copied from the dresses worn by U.S. army officer's wives also add buttons, rings, bracelets, necklaces and heavy belts of silver set with turquoise

What is the protest based on?

modern problems as well as historical injustice

What is the main reason for the scarcity of complete recordings of ceremonial chants?

most singers believe it is too sacred to be made public

When does this dance occur?

on the last night of a 9 night ritual

navajo houses

range from the m odern stucco ranch houses and large trailer homes of tribal officials, administrative staff, and school personnel to smaller one-room houses of every description old style circular log hogans NAVAJO FLOOR PLAN REQUIRES A CIRCULAR FLOOR PLAN Circular shape symbolizes the earth and the domed roof symbolizes both mountaintops and the vault of the sky

What are the purposes of the Shootingway Ceremony?

restoration of harmony between people and snakes, water, or lightning remind themselves of the courses of their means of dealing with the supernatural the music functions in support of an impressive drama depicts the N's view of themselves in relation to the natural world about them

Where do they live now?

scattered communitie sranging from extended family groups to small towns on a reservation spread over parts of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah

Who is the largest Indian tribe?

the Navajo (290,000)

What music is at the core of N. trad. religious philosophy?

the great ceremonial chants

THE ONE-SUNG-OVER

the person to be cured by song

What do the ritual acts do?

the songs, sandpaintings, prayers and other ritual acts recount the story of how this protagonist's trials and adventures brought the Nightway ceremony from the supernatural world for the use of human kind.

What do SINGERS do?

they direct the dance, art, and theater, chant the music, recite the prayers that constitute these extraordinary achievements of the human spirit they learn in the oral tradition by apprenticeship over many years Some teach religion at culturally oriented schools

Iroquois and Chippewa Water Drum

uses a hollowed out log or a wooden keg and a straight stick somewhat carved