Songs as The Soul of a People

Songs are a reflection of the stories of a people. Ke$ha's Tik Tok or Lady Gaga's Bad Romance are reflections of cultural experiences, practices and beliefs of mainstream American culture, because if individual's did not connect to the music, lyrics and rhythms of a song and it's many incarnations (video, radio, iTunes download) the singer would not be financially successful. Now if Ke$ha or Lady Gaga is representational of the soul of the mainstream American people, what does that tell us? That mainstream America is vapid, obsessed with youth, beauty and sex as well as embracing the search for ecstasy with alcohol and drug-induced euphoria. So when you are talking about music as the soul of the people in traditional cultures you are looking into the face of a very different portrait of Dorian Gray, as it were. "Native American music plays a vital role in history and education, with ceremonies and stories orally passing on ancestral customs to new generations. Native American ceremonial music is traditionally said to originate from deities or spirits, or from particularly respected individuals. Rituals are shaped by every aspect of song, dance and costuming, and each aspect informs about the "makers, wearers and symbols important to the nation, tribe, village, clan, family, or individual".[3] Native Americans perform stories through song, music and dance, and the historical facts thus propagated are an integral part of Native American beliefs. Epic legends and stories about culture heroes are a part of tribal music traditions, and these tales are often an iconic part of local culture.[Walter Mesteth's song that was used on the oyate site contains a sense of the warrior spirit/soul of the Lakota people. The lyrics refer to a warrior chasing Custer's men as the were running and crying, but "he had no ears" and would not let them be (http://oyate.manykites.org/artists/mesteth15/lp15.mp3). "This program was one of the first programs recorded for the Oyate series. Wilmer Mesteth is from our own home state of South Dakota and is well known on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He is a full-time instructor for Oglala Lakota College in the Lakota Studies Department and is deeply involved in the music and culture of the Lakota people." (http://oyate.manykites.org/artists/mesteth15/mesteth06.html) Mesteth discusses in this clip that a traditional Lakota singer would have memorized nearly two-thousand songs which is yet another reflection of the Oral Literature of the people. It also has a similarity to the tradition of bards in Celtic countries in the last thousand years. These songs such as those reflecting chivalry and the pure love of knights for a lady were also representational of the soul of the people. THe instruments that a singer plays is also representational of the people's spirit. Bards played fancy lutes or harps, and Native Singers play drums and rattles. The great drums can sound like the heat beat of the world, especially if you are at a pow-wow or Unthanksgiving at Alcatraz and are very near to where the drummers are playing, The vibrations run through you and you can understand how many native peoples believe that the world was created with a song.