Native American Culture: Music And Conclusion

Front 1

Music and Conclusion

Back 1

The sound of stereotypical Indian music came from the need to maintain construction of the "other," but the music is actually much more structured.

Front 2

Music and Conclusion

Back 2

We create aspects of a culture to signify an era.

Front 3

Music and Conclusion

Back 3

Music, which often exhibits an uneasy tension between sonic abstraction and the representation of ideas and things, has been a primary way of evoking, not simply sounds, or even images, but complete worlds of expectation concerning Indian people, rich with narratives and symbolic meanings.

Front 4

Music and Conclusion

Back 4

Indian sounds signify the expectations on Native culture--primitivism and social evolution, violent conflict, indigenous nationalism, Indian disappearance, the romance of the forbidden exotic, the haunted American landscape, and a host of other anxieties, fears, and expectations.

Front 5

Music and Conclusion

Back 5

"Music envelopes like an atmosphere every religious, tribal, and social ceremony as well as every personal experience."

Front 6

Music and Conclusion

Back 6

Deloria is pointing out that with everybody else, there is some form of expectation—stereotyping, racism, etc. When you break that assumption is when you become and anomaly. Regardless of what myth has been, Native people have always been actively engaged in our society.