Pueblo music includes the
music
Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...
of the
Hopi
The Hopi are Native Americans who primarily live in northeastern Arizona. The majority are enrolled in the Hopi Tribe of Arizona and live on the Hopi Reservation in northeastern Arizona; however, some Hopi people are enrolled in the Colorado ...
,
Zuni,
Taos Pueblo
Taos Pueblo (or Pueblo de Taos) is an ancient pueblo belonging to a Taos language, Taos-speaking (Tiwa languages, Tiwa) Native American tribe of Puebloan peoples, Puebloan people. It lies about north of the modern city of Taos, New Mexico. T ...
,
San Ildefonso,
Santo Domingo
Santo Domingo, formerly known as Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city of the Dominican Republic and the List of metropolitan areas in the Caribbean, largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean by population. the Distrito Na ...
, and many other
Puebloan peoples
The Pueblo peoples are Native Americans in the Southwestern United States who share common agricultural, material, and religious practices. Among the currently inhabited Pueblos, Taos, San Ildefonso, Acoma, Zuni, and Hopi are some of the ...
, and according to
Bruno Nettl features one of the most complex
Native American music
Indigenous music of North America, which includes American Indian music or Native American music, is the
music that is used, created or performed by Indigenous peoples of North America, including Native Americans in the United States and Abori ...
al styles on the continent. Characteristics include common use of
hexatonic and
heptatonic scale
A heptatonic scale is a musical scale (music), scale that has seven pitch (music), pitches, or musical tone, tones, per octave. Examples include:
* the #Diatonic scale, diatonic scale; including the major scale and its modes (notably the natural m ...
s, variety of
form,
melodic contour, and percussive
accompaniment
Accompaniment is the musical part which provides the rhythmic and/or harmonic support for the melody or main themes of a song or instrumental piece. There are many different styles and types of accompaniment in different genres and styles of m ...
, melodic range averaging between an octave and a twelfth, with rhythmic complexity equal to the
Plains Indians musical sub-area.
Nettl cites the
Kachina
A kachina (; Hopi language, Hopi: ''katsina'' , plural ''katsinim'' ) is a spirit being in the religious beliefs of the Pueblo people, Native Americans in the United States, Native American cultures located in the south-western part of the Unite ...
dance songs as the most complex songs and the music of Hopi and Zuni as the most complex of the Pueblo, while
Tanoan and
Keresan music is simpler and intermediate between the Plains and western Pueblos. The music of the
Pima and
Papago is intermediary between the Plains-Pueblo and the California-Yuman
music area
In anthropology and geography, a cultural area, cultural region, cultural sphere, or culture area refers to a geography with one relatively homogeneous human activity or complex of activities (culture). Such activities are often associa ...
s, with melodic movement of the Yuman, though including the
rise, and the form and rhythm of the Pueblo. (Nettl 1956, p. 112-113)
Work songs are found in Pueblo music, but are otherwise mostly unknown among Native American folk music (Nettl, 1965, p. 152).
One well-known melody from the
Zuni people
The Zuni (; formerly spelled ''Zuñi'') are Native American Pueblo peoples native to the Zuni River valley. The Zuni people today are federally recognized as the Zuni Tribe of the Zuni Reservation, New Mexico, and most live in the Pueblo o ...
is ''Zuni Sunrise'' or ''The Sunrise Call'', a song frequently played on
Native American flute.
This melody was initially collected by Carlos Troyer and published in an arrangement for voice and piano in 1904.
share characteristics of
Apache
The Apache ( ) are several Southern Athabaskan language-speaking peoples of the Southwestern United States, Southwest, the Southern Plains and Northern Mexico. They are linguistically related to the Navajo. They migrated from the Athabascan ho ...
music and Plains-Pueblo music.
References
Sources
*Nettl, Bruno (1956). ''Music in Primitive Culture''. Harvard University Press.
*Nettl, Bruno (1965). ''Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents''. Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Southwestern Indian music
Zuni culture
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