North American Music - Essay Example

North American MusicNorth Americans emphasize singing that is accompanied by percussion instruments like drums or rattles, as opposed to purely instrumental music. Musical genres of North America include songs given to people by the guardian spirits, lullabies, songs sung during stories, curing songs, ceremonial and social dance songs, songs that accompany games, and songs for work or daily activities. The dance, spirituality and music are normally tightly interwoven in a worldview that sees very little separation between secular and sacred.

In the ceremonial and social songs, were they a way of determining the status of an individual in the community and were they only preserved for the rich? North Americans believed that objects of extraordinary value possessed a spirit element, and more so sacred were regalia and obsidian blades. Getting wealth and maintaining the status that came with it were central to North Americans thoughts and consciousness.The rich men did not labor but spent most of the time in their homes making ceremonial costumes and arrows which they sold at a high cost.

Feasts, ceremonies, and dances could not be held without the inclusion the ceremonial regalia that are owned by the rich. It was a hard and tedious job assembling the many scalps and skins that some pieces needed, but the effect was striking. In public ceremonies they were dazzling; they were prized for their uniqueness and beauty and the wealth they symbolized (Randel, D. M. 2003 pg. 41). Equally rare and costly were the big, oblong blades. The larger blades were more expensive. The more perfect and regular the shape of the blade the more its value; artisans deliberately and carefully chipped them in an oblong form.

From the high costs associated with the costumes, arrows, and blades that are the symbols of the ceremonial and social songs, I think that this basically means that these songs are basically preserved for the rich who mainly posses them or can easily afford them in their functions. Reference.Randel, D. M. 2003. The Harvard dictionary of music. Cambridge, Mass. [u.a.], Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.