Navajo music is the music of the Navajo people and nation, currently in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. Wikibooks Wikiversity has more about this subject: School of Music Look up Music on Wiktionary, the free dictionary Wikisource, as part of the 1911 Encyclopedia Wikiproject, has original text related to this article: Music Wikicities has a wiki about Music: Music MusicNovatory: the science of music encyclopedia Science of Music... Manuelito, Navajo chief Navajo Nation (Navajo: Naabeehó Dineé) is the name of a sovereign Native American nation established by the Diné. The Navajo Indian Reservation covers about 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometres) of land, occupying all of northeastern Arizona, and extending into Utah and New Mexico, and... Manuelito, Navajo chief Navajo Nation (Navajo: Naabeehó Dineé) is the name of a sovereign Native American nation established by the Diné. The Navajo Indian Reservation covers about 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometres) of land, occupying all of northeastern Arizona, and extending into Utah and New Mexico, and...

Contemporary popular

Music requested on the radio on the Navajo Nation is most often rock, country, and gospel music, often performed by Navajo musicians (McAllester 1981-1982). Rock and roll (also spelled Rock n Roll, especially in its first decade), also called rock, is a form of popular music, usually featuring vocals (often with vocal harmony), electric guitars and a strong back beat; other instruments, such as the saxophone, are common in some styles. ... Country music, formerly called country and western music or country-western, is an amalgam of popular musical forms developed in the southern United States, with roots in traditional folk music, spirituals, and the blues. ... Gospel music may refer either to the religious music that first came out of African-American churches in the 1930s or, more loosely, to both black gospel music and to the religious music composed and sung by white southern Christian artists. ...

Traditional

Traditional Navajo music is always vocal, with most instruments, which include drums, drumsticks, rattles, rasp, flute, whistle, and bullroarer, being used to accompany singing of specific types of song (Frisbie and McAllester 1992). As of 1982 there were over 1,000 Singers, Medicine People called Hatathli, qualified to perform one or more of thirty ceremonials and countless shorter prayer rituals (Frisbie and Tso n.d.) which restore hózhó or harmonious condition, good health, serenity. In music a singer or vocalist is a type of musician who sings, i. ... An instrument is a concrete or abstract tool intended for a purpose other than mechanical work, in particular a refined one. ... For other kinds of drums, see drum (disambiguation). ... A drum stick is an item used to hit percussion instruments to produce sound. ... A rattle may be: bird-scaring rattle, a Slovene device used to drive birds off vineyards and a folk instrument football rattle, a noisy ratchet device for showing approval, used by sports fans. ... A rasp is a woodworking tool used for shaping wood. ... This article is about the musical instrument. ... A whistle is a one-note woodwind instrument which produces sound from a stream of forced air. ... A bullroarer or turndun is a primitive ritual musical instrument and means of communicating over extended distances. ...

These songs are the most sacred holy songs, the "complex and comprehensive" religious literature of the Navajo, may be considered classical music (McAllester and Mitchell 1983), while all other songs, including personal, patriotic, work, recreation, jokes, and less sacred ceremonial songs, may be considered popular music. The "popular" side is characterized by public performance while most Navajo people prefer diyin not be made public (and thus not featured on the recording listed at bottom). (ibid) Religious music (also sacred music) is music performed or composed for religious use or through religious influence. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Popular music is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and mostly distributed commercially. ... A street musician with accordion in Bremen A performance comprises an event in which generally one group of people (the performer or performers) behave in a particular way for the benefit of another group of people (the viewer or viewers, or audience). ...

The longest ceremonies may last up to nine nights and days while performing rituals that restore the balance between good and evil, or positive and negative forces. Songs, music, sandpaintings, masked performances, and other rituals call upon deities and natural forces to restore the person to harmony and balance within the context of the world forces. The person to be supernaturally assisted, the one "sung over," becomes the protagonist, identifying with the deities of the Diné Creation Stories, and at one point becoming part of the Story Cycle by sitting on a sandpainting with iconography pertaining to the specific story and dieties. (McAllester 1981-1982) Sandpainting is the art of painting ritual paintings for religious or healing ceremonies. ...

The lyrics, which may last over an hour and are usually sung in groups, contain narrative epics including the beginning of the world, phenomenology, morality, and other lessons. Longer songs are divided into two or four balanced parts and feature an alternation of chantlike verses and buoyant melodically active choruses concluded by a refrain in the style and including lyrics of the chorus. Lyrics, songs, groups, and topics are cyclic: the main deity, Changing Woman, is immortal and grows old in the winter and young in the spring. Long myths are also spoken during ceremonies and elaborate the origin stories found in lyrics. (ibid) Lyric can have a number of meanings. ... EPIC might be an acronym or abbreviation for: Electronic Privacy Information Center Exchange Price Information Computer of the London Stock Exchange Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing Enhanced Programmable ircII Client - a chat client for Unix-like systems El Paso Intelligence Center End Poverty In California European Privatisation and Investment Corporation European... Phenomenology is a current in philosophy that takes intuitive experience of phenomena (what presents itself to us in conscious experience) as its starting point and tries to extract the essential features of experiences and the essence of what we experience. ... Morality in the strictest sense of the word, deals with that which is universally regarded as right or wrong. ... The term dualism is the state of being dual, or having a two fold division. ... A chant (peace¹) is the rhythmic speaking or singing of words or sounds, either on a single pitch or with a simple melody involving a limited set of notes and often including a great deal of repetition or statis. ... Verse is a writing that uses meter as its primary organisational mode, as opposed to prose, which uses grammatical and discoursal units like sentences and paragraphs. ... Look up melody in Wiktionary, the free dictionary In music, a melody is a series of linear events or a succession, not a simultaneity as in a chord. ... In classical music a chorus is any substantial group of performers in a play, revue, musical or opera who act more or less as one. ... A refrain (from the Old French refraindre to repeat, likely from Vulgar Latin refringere) is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the chorus of a song. ... A cycle is anything round, in the physical sense (e. ...

The "popular" music resembles the highly active melodic motion of the choruses, featuring wide intervallic leaps and melodic range usually an octave to octave and a half. Structurally the songs are created from the complex repetition, division, and combinations of most often no more than four or five phrases, with short songs often immediately following each other for continuity as needed in work songs. Their lyrics are mostly vocables, with certain vocables specific to genres, but may contain short humurous or satirical texts. (ibid) Melodic motion is the nearness or farness of successive pitches or notes in a melody. ... www. ... In music, an octave (sometimes abbreviated 8ve or 8va) is the interval between one musical note and another with half or double the frequency. ... Repetition is the occurrence of an event which has occurred before. ... In music a phrase is a section of music that is relatively self contained and coherent over a medium time scale. ... A vocable is a word used without meaning. ... Musical genres are categories which contain music which share a certain style or which have certain elements in common. ...

Peyote songs

Peyote songs are a form of Native American music, now most often performed as part of the Native American Church, which came to the northern part of the Navajo Nation around 1936. They are typically accompanied by a rattle and water drum, and are used in a ceremonial aspect during the sacramental taking of peyote. Peyote songs share characteristics of Apache music and Plains-Pueblo music. (Nettl 1956, p.114) Peyote songs are a form of Native American music, performed as part of the Native American Church. ... Pueblo music includes the music of the Hopi, Zuni, Taos Pueblo, San Ildefonso, Santo Domingo, and many other peoples, and according to Bruno Nettl features one of the most complex Native American musical styles on the continent. ...

In recent years, a modernized version of peyote songs have been popularized by Verdell Primeaux, a Sioux, and Johnny Mike, a Navajo.

Source

• Liner notes: Navajo Songs (1992), recorded by Laura Boulton in 1933 and 1940, annotated by Charlotte J. Frisbie and David McAllester. Smithsonian Folkways: SF 40403.