War dance today is the most vital and popular of all Plains Indian music and dance. Its importance may be measured by its wide-spread diffusion on the Northern and Southern Plains, its penetration into other music areas, its influence on intertribal celebrations, and its accelerated proliferation since the turn of the twentieth century. War dance is the nucleus of today's tribal and intertribal powwows both on reservations and in urban Indian communities.

Much of today's War dance is an amalgamation of many tribal styles of the Northern and Southern Plains. Within these two major geocultural subdivisions remains an older form of music and dance style which is a remnant of the Grass dance and related ceremonies which were popular on the Northern and Southern Plains in the 1870's. This older form has characteristic music and dance which may be termed the "classic" style. Therefore, while the " Northern style" is popular on the Northern Plains, there remain northern tribes who still sing and dance in the classic style. The same is true on the Southern Plains.

Nomenclature

The term "War dance" is somewhat colorful. It generally does not relate to warfare with the exception of some dances performed in honor of war heroes. These are usually restricted to the reservation areas and are comprised of word songs. You are listening to one such example now, WW1 Veteran's Song by the Porcupine Singers. At intertribal celebrations, the term "War dance" suffices, but on reservations and in other Indian communities, we find that War dance is known by other names. Among the Lakota on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, it is called "Omaha dance," because the dance was historically learned from the Omaha tribe;   among the Shoshoni and Arapaho it is known as the "Wolf dance," the wolf being associated with the warrior or scout;   the Lakota of Standing Rock as well as the Blackfeet, Cree, Assiniboine, and Three Affiliated Tribes call it "Grass dance," a term used by many of the Northern Plains tribes.

On the Southern Plains, while the dance is known generically as war dancing, there is a distinction made between the fast, or "Fancy," dance of the Kiowa, Comanche, Kiowa-Apache, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, and the more conservative, or classic "Straight" dance of the northern Oklahoma tribes. Many of the ceremonies connected with the Osage, Pawnee, and other styles of dancing can be traced directly to the Grass dance of the Northern Plains.

The popularity of the term probably originated with the advent of the wild west shows when non-Indian impresarios were coining promotional slogans to attract the imaginations of the general public. However it originated, the term remained and is currently used or understood by the Indians themselves.

In order to understand the diffusion of War dance, some discussion of its morphology and style is neccessary. The diffusion process dictates that sometimes the song and dance style must be modified as it moves from reservation to reservation. In learning about the morphology of the War dance song, we will understand what sections of the songs are modified and how. But first, let us attempt to broadly define War dance and music and describe its prominent features.

"War dance" is a generic term applied by Plains Indians themselves to a form of group dance in which individuals perform free-style movements. The dance has little or no formal routine or pattern;   rather, the dancers move spontaneously in various directions within the dance area. There is a tendency for the entire body of dancers to move en masse around the center of the dance area in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. In the Northern Plains the direction is usually counterclockwise, while the opposite is true on the Southern Plains. Some special songs dictate a contrary ruling to the normal direction of the dance.

While the dance is primarily for men, women participate to a lesser degree, either dancing in place or moving clockwise or counterclockwise, using conservative steps. The degree to which the women perform varies from tribe to tribe, as does the direction of their movement. On Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations, the women dance on the outside of the men in a clockwise (opposite) direction, while in Oklahoma they normally dance in the same direction as the men, usually mingled with the men dancers.

The War dance is prformed in traditional or modified traditional dance costumes. Generally the costumes are similar, although definite tribal styles still exist. The costumes generally complement the characteristic movements of dancers:   abrupt changes of posture, angular torso and arm movements, rapid and erratic nodding of the head, and a variety of steps which coincide with the tempo of the song and drum. Many dancers carry eagle-bone or metal whistles which they blow during certain parts of the song.

On reservations War dances are performed year round but reach a crescendo between May and September, when they are danced outdoors in large brush arbors. In the winter they are danced in community halls. War dances are also performed in conjunction with religious observances or patriotic holidays, but are not neccessarily religious or patriotic themselves. War dancing may also be found as focal points of Indian traveling shows or tourist attractions, and is also performed regularly - usually monthly - in cities where there are large Indian populations.

The melody is characterized by descending, pentatonic scales. The pitch of the song is generally higher in the north than in the south. There is a variety of voice characteristics:   in the north songs are sung falsetto at the beginning, dropping into raspy, throaty registers. In the south there is an absence of falsetto but an abundance of nasal, quavering tones. In the classic styles of the north one hears stressed vocables resembling falsetto shouts or yelps.

Depending on the text, three kinds of War dance songs exist:   (1) those sung with vocables or burden syllables only;   (2) those sung with words only; and (3) those sung with both vocables and words.

The songs are sung in unison by a group of male singers standing or seated around a bass dance drum, each using a drumstick. They are assisted by a few women who sing an octave above them, their voices trailing behind the men's after each chorus. The average group consists of six to eight men, sometimes more.

On the Southern Plains, one "drum" (group of singers) provides the music for a War dance, but on the Northern Plains, as many as 23 drums perform at one gathering. When there is more than one, the song groups alternate.

The tempo varies depending on the song. For this reason they are sometimes referred to as slow, medium, or fast War dances. The rhythm is pulsating, and increases and decreases in volume intermittently. Accented duple beats and secondary accented beats occur both at specific junctures and spontaneously.

There is a definite synchronization of voice and drum, though to the Western-oriented ear they appear to be independent. While, in some instances, the drumbeat coincides precisely with the utterance of a vocable, it more often occurs "between" the vocables. The drumbeat slightly precedes the voice;   if we examine the beginnings and endings of War dance songs, we find that the drum is struck an instant before the voice begins and ends an instant before the voice. When the song accelerates or decelerates, there is a constant relationship between the voice and the drum.

The most significant trait of all War dance songs is the similarity of the song form. Whether the War dance song is sung on the Northern or Southern Plains, or even beyond the periphery of the Plains area, the internal structures of the songs are identical. While word songs are still composed, most War dance songs are comprised entirely of vocables. Like the form, the vocable is similar in all regions, but because the vocable structure of a song is governed by language, the vocables change.

Generally, in the diffusion process, sounds which are foreign to a tribe are substituted. The relationship between language and music, or vocable and music, and vocable and language is important to note, as it plays a major role in the diffusion process.

Composition and Adaptation

Diffusion begins with the composition or adaptation of a song. War dance songs are composed by individuals who are established in the Indian community as singers or " song-makers." In the case of new songs, the composer creates the melody, vocables, and words in accordance with a desired tempo. His inspiration is derived either from supernatural sources, such as dreams, or vision quests, or through conscious creativity. In either case, he is in essence composing against a list of predetermined standards:   scale, vocables, language, and form. Singers say they receive inspiration from such phenomena as the hum of tires on a road, the whisper of the wind in the trees, or the conscious creation of a rhythmic pattern such as beating two rocks or sticks together. In all cases the inspiration seems to originate in the deliberation on monotonous, sound-producing phenomena.

In cases of song adaptation, the composer may add words to a song which already exists with vocables, or may alter a Round dance, Two-step, or other kind of secular or even religious song. He may also buy, trade, or "steal" a song from another tribe and modify it according to the standards of his own tribe's style. No matter how the song is composed, the composer is limited to a specific song pattern to which his creative or adaptive impulses must conform. This conformity must not be viewed as so strict, though, that the comoser may not impose individual style on his compositions. Individual style plays an important role in diffusion because many songs are carried off the reservations by a single person. This happens frequently today with the relocation of individuals off the reservation areas. The individual singing his tribe's songs or performing its dances in a remote area where his tribesmen are not present to criticize may feel additional freedom in improvising on his tribe's traditional music. It must also be noted that individuals who carry songs from reservations to the urban communities are in some cases not recognized singers in their own communities. This would, it seems, have a strong bearing on the diffusion of music, since in many cases, the carrier, or prime source of diffusion, may not be a reliable singer according to his own tribe's standards.

Morphology and Modification

It is neccessary to understand the morphology of the song in order to understand how it is modified in diffusion. If songs are retained their original characteristics, tracing the diffusion would be simple;   but unfortunately, this is not the case. There is a great deal of hope for comparative musicologist to salvage existing materials because the melodic and rhythmic components of the song undergo far less change than the style and presentation of the song in a new environment.

The performance of War dance songs generally falls into the classification known as the "incomplete repetition" type, indicating that in each song there are two basic sections, and that the second section is an abbreviated form of the first.

While this serves as a general classification, in order to be specific as to how and why songs change, we must divide the standard War dance song into six parts. These will be described, noting what kind of change (if any) occurs in each as the songs diffuse.

The Introduction or Lead

This is an introductory phrase sung by one man. It has three functions:   to identify the song for the other singers, to establish the pitch in the first rendition, and to indicate to the singers that the leader wants to repeat the song.

In some types of diffusion, the lead remains intact. In others, the lead may be lengthened, shortened, raised, lowered, or replaced. In the northern style it is sung more lyrically than in the southern, using open vowel sounds with little enunciation of vocables. In the Southern Plains there is a greater enunciation of vocables, probably due to the lowering of the register. In the classic style, especially among the Lakota, Blackfeet, Cree, and Cheyenne, one hears a number of accented notes resembling shouts or yelps in the lead. The lead is the portion of the song most likely to be modified in any kind of diffusion.

The Second

This is simply a repeat of the lead by the rest of the group. In the northern and classic style, the second interrupts the lead line. On the Southern Plains there is more often a slight pause between the lead and the second. The second usually occurs at a specific point in the lead;   however, on the Northern Plains it may appear to overlap almost simultaneously once the first rendition of the song has been sung.

The Chorus

This portion of the song immediately follows the lead and second, and is sung by the entire group. The melody and vocables of the chorus are different in each song. In diffusion, there is less modification of the chorus than of any other section of the song. A good variation to this is found in the northern-style songs, which have hesitations in the chorus that singers outside the style area find difficult to duplicate. It should be noted that it is in this section of the song that female singers join in.

The First Ending

This is a standard section of the War dance song which undergoes little or no modification. Like the chorus, it is sung by the entire group, and signals the halfway point in the song. In addition to the melody, the vocables are somewhat standardized, but may change in diffusion. They may be generally written:

we yo he ye he ye o-oi

The first ending is sung to the accompaniment of seven beats of the drum. In diffusion, the volume and style of drumming may change.

While in this section there is no particular accenting in the northern or classic style, in Oklahoma the singers play the drum in duple accents, beginning with the last beats of the first ending and continuing through the next part of the song. These beats are called middle beats, or honor beats, and cue the dancers to perform a particular variation in their dance movements in which they slightly bow in the direction of the drum. In the Southern Plains there are usually three accented duple beats.

The women's voices trail off behind the men's in the first ending.

The first four sections are sung in vocables.

The Repeat Chorus

As its name implies, this is simply another rendition of the chorus, but this time without the lead and second. It is sung by the group, including the women.

In Oklahoma, the accented duple beats introduce the repeat chorus (usually two of them coupled with the third held over from the first ending), but in the Northern Plains they occur in the middle of the repeat chorus. Here we find four of five duple acented beats, though more may be added spontaneously. Generally the volume of the drum decreases at the beginning of the repeat chorus and builds up to fortissimo near the end.

It is in the repeat chorus that words are sometimes used. Interspersed between the words are vocables which are inserted to make the lyrics of the repeat chorus correspond with the vocables of the chorus in time value. This is done somewhat to avoid distorting the words, though some word distortion does exist.

When songs are learned by tribes speaking different languages, the words are dropped and the vocables originally appearing in the chorus are sung in the repeat chorus.

The Final Ending

This section corresponds to the first ending with the exception of the last vocable, which changes from o-oi to yo. It signals the end of one complete song. The seven beats which accompany the final ending normally get progressively louder. The final ending signals the dancers to stop dancing on the last beat.

Continuation of Song

During the course of a dance the complete song is repeated over and over, the number of renditions being determined by regional or tribal taste. The number of times the song is sung for a complete dance, as well as other vocal and percussive techniques, change from one region to the next.

Generally, the songs are sung more times through in the north. Some songs may be repeated as many as 20 times. In the south, three or four times in normal. Classic songs tend to be sung a fixed number of times (for example, four times through among the Lakota).

In all areas the several renditions of the song are followed by a "tail," or encore. Among classic Oklahoma songs, the tail is simply one rendition of the repeat chorus and final ending. It is usually separated from the last song by a short pause. On the Northern Plains, the tail begins with the repeat chorus but, rather than stopping, continues again for another complete song (a total of one and a half songs).

The continuation of song is governed by the lead singer, and in some cases, especially in the north, by a whistle man, a dancer who blows his whistle over the heads of the singers if he wishes them to continue the song. Normally when the first song is nearing the end, the leader begins to sing the lead again while the rest of the group is singing the final ending. This interruption of the group by the leader varies somewhat in different areas. In classic songs there is a definite clash between the voice of the leader and that of the group. This is also more or less true in Oklahoma. In the north, however, the leader may wait until the last two or three beats before the last vocable to begin the lead.

In continuing from the first song to the next, the leader may want to increase the pitch and tempo. The pitch is simply sung higher by the leader without any signal, but if the tempo is to be increased, the leader usually plays a series of accented duple beats right before he begins his lead line. In playing the duple beats he picks up the tempo.

Normally the tempo remains continuous after it has been increased one time, although on the Northern Plains there is a feeling of a slight ritard after the middle beats in the repeat chorus are played.

While it is difficult to generalize about all the music and dance of such a vast area as the Northern and Southern Plains, some general statements can be made about the diffusion of War dance. In the diffusion of music, it is the style and presentation of the War dance that are modified to a greater degree than the actual melodic and rhythmic structure of the song. This modification is governed by the tribe, the style area, and the culture area, until it reaches another culture area where it loses its functions as a War dance but may obtain new functions. While there is a general southward song movement on the Plains, because of the Indian's adaptation to modern forms of transportation and communications, the War dance song is difficult to trace with accuracy. The general cradle of creativity seems to lie on the Northern Plains, but a great deal of comparative material does not exist to corroborate where and when the songs origninate.