page_title: Native Americans in the United States
section_title: Music
hierarchical_section_title: Native Americans in the United States / Society, language, and culture / Music
caption_attribution_description: Seafair Indian Days Pow Wow, Daybreak Star Cultural Center, Seattle, Washington. The event is part of Seafair (a series of annual summer events in Seattle) and under the aegis of the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation.
context_page_description: Native Americans, also known as American Indians, Indigenous Americans and other terms, are the indigenous peoples of the United States, except Hawaii and territories of the United States. There are 574 federally recognized tribes living within the US, about half of which are associated with Indian reservations. The term "American Indian" excludes Native Hawaiians and some Alaskan Natives, while "Native Americans" are American Indians, plus Alaska Natives of all ethnicities. The US Census does not include Native Hawaiians, Samoans, or Chamorros, instead being included in the Census grouping of "Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander".
  The ancestors of living Native Americans arrived in what is now the United States at least 15,000 years ago, possibly much earlier, from Asia via Beringia. A vast variety of peoples, societies and cultures subsequently developed. European colonization of the Americas, which began in 1492, resulted in a precipitous decline in Native American population through introduced diseases, warfare, ethnic cleansing, and slavery.
context_section_description: Traditional Native American music is almost entirely monophonic, but there are notable exceptions. Native American music often includes drumming or the playing of rattles or other percussion instruments but little other instrumentation. Flutes and whistles made of wood, cane, or bone are also played, generally by individuals, but in former times also by large ensembles (as noted by Spanish conquistador de Soto). The tuning of modern flutes is typically pentatonic.
  Performers with Native American parentage have occasionally appeared in American popular music such as Rita Coolidge, Wayne Newton, Gene Clark, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Blackfoot, Redbone (members are also of Mexican descent), and CocoRosie. Some, such as John Trudell, have used music to comment on life in Native America. Other musicians such as R. Carlos Nakai, Joanne Shenandoah and Robert "Tree" Cody integrate traditional sounds with modern sounds in instrumental recordings, whereas the music by artist Charles Littleleaf is derived from ancestral heritage as well as nature. A variety of small and medium-sized recording companies offer an abundance of recent music by Native American performers young and old, ranging from pow-wow drum music to hard-driving rock-and-roll and rap. In the International world of ballet dancing Maria Tallchief was considered America's first major prima ballerina, and was the first person of Native American descent to hold the rank. along with her sister Marjorie Tallchief both became star ballerinas.
  The most widely practiced public musical form among Native Americans in the United States is that of the pow-wow. At pow-wows, such as the annual Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, members of drum groups sit in a circle around a large drum. Drum groups play in unison while they sing in a native language and dancers in colorful regalia dance clockwise around the drum groups in the center. Familiar pow-wow songs include honor songs, intertribal songs, crow-hops, sneak-up songs, grass-dances, two-steps, welcome songs, going-home songs, and war songs. Most indigenous communities in the United States also maintain traditional songs and ceremonies, some of which are shared and practiced exclusively within the community.
caption: Fancy Dancer at the Seafair Indian Days Pow-Wow, Daybreak Star Cultural Center, Seattle, Washington
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