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Native american music
Native american music
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Native american music
Native american music
Native american culture ceremonies
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Messages can be conveyed in many ways including through movement. A dancer knows how to use their facial expressions, combined with the dynamics of their body, to get their message across. A choreographer knows how to structure a dance to communicate a message through body in motion. Alvin Ailey choreographed his dancers and used this form of communication to create many powerful dances.
For most young children, Native Americans are fascinating, fictional characters that only appear in books and movies. The existence of these people in the real world never seems to cross children’s minds as they enjoy Peter Pan or Squanto. After all, The Native Chief in Peter Pan is arguably depicted as a goofy looking character. Being a child once myself, I went right along with the stereotype. I pictured these “Red men” singing their chants and jumping around a fire.
During this time period, Native Americans were being treated so poorly. They were very misunderstood, and white men didn 't even try to understand them. All they cared about was forcing the Indians off of "their" land. This is unfair in so many ways. One being that the Natives were actually there first.
In her article, Embodying Difference, Jane Desmond argues that dance offers important insights into the ways moving bodies articulate cultural meanings and social identities. In other words, she explains the importance of studying the body’s movement as a way of understanding culture and society. She has two main arguments. First, she argues for the importance of the continually changing relational constitutions of cultural forms. Desmond further explains that the key to shedding light on the unequal distribution of power and goods that shape social relations are the concepts of cultural resistance, appropriation, and cultural imperialism (49).
The Civil War was over and Slavery was no longer, more people started immigrating to the colonies. The population in the colonies increased, living conditions started to dwindle. The government knew they needed to find land for farming and to house their growing populations. They focused on expanding toward the West, this region was already occupied by the Native American’s. The Government thought the Native American’s were savages and incapable of becoming civilized.
To dance is to be knowledgeable about the stories of the ancestral heroes. Dancing, unlike painting and singing, is learnt at an early age. This allows large groups of people to demonstrate their clan rights in front of an audience. Dance is also seen as an occasion to entertain and to be entertained and through the work of dance to show their love for families and kin. It is for this reason that dance may be performed at the end of every day in some communities.
A dance film, on the other hand, employs dance as a main character with a more pivotal role in the transformation of the protagonist. Thus, in Shall We Dansu?, because it is an active force in the narrative with human-like characteristics, such as being shrouded in shame, ballroom dance becomes an initiator of intimacy. In Salsa and DanceSport, McMains explains Mexican-American Giselle Fernandez’s need for a creation of an alter ego despite already being
Ceremony and rituals have played a vital and essential role in Native American culture for a long time. Often referred to as “religion,” most Native Americans did not think their spirituality, ceremonies, and rituals as “religion,” the same way that Christians do. Instead, their beliefs and practices form an integral and seamless part of their being. Like other aboriginal people around the world, their beliefs were heavily influenced by their ways of getting food, – from hunting to agriculture. They also did ceremonies and rituals that gave power to conquer the difficulties of life, as wells as events and milestones, such as puberty, marriage, and death.
“Artworks have ‘aboutness’ and demand interpretation” (Barrett 71). This statement creates a foundation for writing, specifically about dance, as each dance piece is always about something, no matter how simple it appears to be. As I began to write about dance I knew not only to provide a description of the piece, but utilize the description as evidence as I develop a possible meaning. Additionally he explains, “There can be different, competing, and contradictory interpretations of the same artwork” (Barrett 73). When I would begin to develop an explanation from the description I provided, I had to remind myself that my interpretation was only one view of the dance and I should not try to provide one comprehensive interpretation for the
Research-Informed Perspective Project Annotated Source List Belz, M. J. (2005). Inclusion of Native American Music in “Silver Burdett Making Music K-8.” Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, 164, 19–34.
While still in the United States, Native American tribes are considered sovereign countries. Tribes have their own system that tends to the needs on the reservation. This includes their own government structures, passing laws and ensuring they are enforced. When Native Americans were forced onto reservations, agreements were made between tribal leaders and government officials to ensure that Native Americans would be able to govern their own people, enabling each tribe to protect their distinctive cultural practices and identities. Yet with this distinct divide, many Native Americans do not get the same treatments and benefits that many others get in the dominant society.
From my visit to The Native American Voices Exhibit at The University of Pennsylvania a there was a collection of historical memorabilia that indeed celebrates this community. The presentation as a whole set out descriptive displays that certainly memorialized The Native Americans as well as those Native Americans (The Lenape) who were the first to live locally in Delaware. The objects that I chose to take a picture of were at first very visually appealing. After taking a deeper look into those objects, I realized that all had significant value to this community.
“People dance because dance can change things. One move, can bring people together. One move, can make you believe like there's something more. One move, can set a whole generation free.” (Adam Sevani).
Tribal flag songs and National anthems are also a major part of the Native American musical activities, and are starters to public ceremonies, especially powwows. Songs that are translatable include historical songs, like the Navajo "Shi' Naasha', which celebrates the end of Navajo internment in Fort Sumner, New Mexico in 1868. Many songs celebrate harvest, planting season or other important times of year. The music plays a vital role in education and history, with ceremonies and stories orally passing on ancestral customs to new generations. Native American ceremonial music is said to originate from spirits and deities, or from a particularly respected individual.
Native Americans Native Americans are very different from other tribes. They eat, live, dress and do many things differently. The things I’m going to be talking about in my interesting paper is What they eat? What they wear? Where they live?