"Weapons of Emotion"
Subtitle: A Sampling of Historical Indigenous Instrumental Music throughout North America
By: by Alexis Baril
Contributors: NC Digital Online Collection of Knowledge and Scholarship (NCDOCKS)
Publisher: [University of North Carolina at Greensboro]
Published: 2019
Place of publication: Greensboro, N.C.]
Language: eng
Subjects: Music--; Indians of North America; Music-- (Title)
Notes: Abstract: The Indigenous traditions and experiences of instrumental music in North America are as varied and diverse as the people that use them. However, Indigenous instruments share three common traits. First, particularly prior to European contact, instruments, are of organic construction. After contact, Indigenous peoples had access to various processed materials such as tin that they then incorporated into their musical practices. Second, instruments can be classified into four distinct families: drums; flutes and whistles; rattles and shakers; and other percussion. Finally, the vast majority of uses of these instruments were strongly tied to spiritual rituals and events and were used to symbolize, imitate or invoke sounds, experiences, or entities found in the natural and spiritual worlds. This paper will examine musical instruments of eight different groups of Indigenous peoples, spanning six of the ten cultural regions in North America: the Pacific Northwest, the Great Basin, the Southwest, the Great Plains, the Southeast, and the Northeast, specifically, the Great Lakes.

Available online via NCDOCKS.

Thesis University of North Carolina Greensboro 2019.