Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/352

 pillmore] HARMONIC STRUCTURE OF INDIAN MUSIC 301

melodies are no more accidental than are any other natural pro- ducts, mental or otherwise. Vocal music, of course, precedes all instrumental music by an immeasurable interval. When vocal music is made spontaneously, without reference to any theory, it must follow the lines of least resistance, must obey the general law of all activity, physical and mental. The real questions to be determined, then, in studying the structure of primitive songs, are such as these: What direction does the voice take when primitive man expresses his feelings in song ? Is that direction the same for all races of men, or are there different laws which govern the kind of intervals used by different races ?

I ask your attention, therefore, to a number of characteristic examples of aboriginal songs, taken from tribes belonging to dif- ferent linguistic stocks and dwelling in widely separated portions of our country, and which for the greater part have not as yet been published.

I present first some songs of the Navaho tribe as being the most primitive in character of any I have yet studied. They form, in fact, the connecting link between excited howling and excited singing. The quality of tone is indescribable, being more like a yelp than anything else ; but the intervals yelped are unmistakably those of the major chord or of the minor chord.

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��The tone-quality is that of shouting, or even howling, but the pitcJi-relations into which they tend to fall are those of the major chord. There is a key-note or tonic which persistently as- serts itself and predominates overwhelmingly throughout the song. Associated with this key-note are only two other tones :

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