Blackfoot Music - Song Composition

Song Composition

Traditionally, songs are considered to be given, completed, to individual Blackfoot people in visions or dreams. Though it is now accepted that music, especially white music, may be composed in the European influenced sense, the traditional view still greatly affects how songs and their creation or origin are considered. Songs are considered somewhat like objects, in that they may be created of components, but once finished become a unity. They may also be "given" or even sold. Some songs belong to everyone, some songs to just one person but may be sung by others, and some songs individuals save until times of great need. Two songs which may be aurally identical may considered different songs if they have different origins, i.e., came from different visions. (Nettl, 1989)

Most songs, except gambling songs which simply repeat "litany-like" one or two phrases, are characterized by an "incomplete repetition" formal pattern, "many of them can ultimately be reduced to a binary form in which the section is a variation and/or reduction of the first." (p.43) However, there was more formal variation in the past (p.100). Songs sung with medicine basket openings and gamblings songs often use isometric and isorhythmic rhythmic structures or lesser note-ength values (p.44). Typically songs begin in falsetto before singers move to their head voices. Octave equivalence appears to be used, as transposition down by an octave of subsequent repetitions of a section is common, though may also occur down a perfect fourth or perfect fifth (p.43). Songs begin with a "head motif" repeated by the second singer and then used to "generate" the rest of the song in ways which are fairly predictable to Blackfoot listeners, which facilitates accomplishing the ideal of learning songs in one hearing (p.100-101).