Native American/First Nations Music (Plains)

[wpspoiler name=”The Arapaho Boys” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler] Music of the Plains tribes, such as the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Dakota, Crow and Comanche, who live/lived in the center of the North American continent, stretching from Texas all the way north into central Canada, features vocals with high, nasal pitches (often sung in falsetto), and songs with “incomplete repetition,” meaning songs divided into two parts, with the second part always repeated before the song starts again at the top.

[Watch a performance by the Arapaho Boys (note the high falsetto) | Watch a a performance of the Arapaho “eagle song” (it starts at 1:55) | Listen to Northern Cheyenne “flag songs,” which are songs many Native American tribes adopted around the turn of the 20th century to honor the flag of the United States | Listen to two Southern Cheyenne songs | Listen to a Blackfoot song]