Page:The American Indian.djvu/192

146 tribes we find aboriginal music in what seems to be an adulterated form. Though some attention has been given to the subject, the study of this surviving native music as a culture trait-complex has never advanced beyond a few isolated experiments. On the other hand, a number of investigators have sought by analytic methods to discover the fundamental structural elements, but their work is still in the controversial stage. For one thing, effort has been made to discover the ideal scales toward which the Indian singer strove, whereas, the proper procedure is the empirical determination of actual scales. Nevertheless, this analytic study has revealed what seem to be the most distinctive characters of New World music. First and foremost is what has been described as a "rhythmic pulsation of the voice on sustained notes somewhat analogous to the effect produced on the violin when the same note is slightly sounded several times during one stroke of the bow." This is a feat of singing learned with difficulty and which makes the proper notation of the music in our system extremely difficult. Another surprising characteristic is the disassociation of dance and instrumental rhythms from the song. Thus, we may sometimes find the drumming, dancing and singing each in a different rhythm, something almost incomprehensible to our musicians. As may be expected, there is no harmony, but this quality is lacking in all primitive music; hence, its absence is not distinctive of the New World. Yet, too much weight should not be given these immature generalizations, for in the first stages of linguistic development analogous traits of New World languages were assumed, most of which are now historical curiosities. What we need first of all is patient collecting and classifying. Already we find evidences of geographical areas for music, just as in art, mythology, etc. Thus, the entire eastern maize area and the bison area seem to have one type, the Pacific Coast belt another, and the Pueblo area another. This, unfortunately, cannot be definitely stated and must remain a mere surmise until properly investigated.

A little more can be done with instruments, though even here we lack good studies. The two most common instruments