examines both what the Sioux culture û or rather, cultures û was like before European contact as well as what that culture has evolved into with a focus on the music of this people set within a broader artistic and cultural and even political context. It is probably true that no musical tradition can informatively be discussed in the absence of such a context, but this seems especially true for Native American music, which was learned and performed and understood within a context that included dance and ritual and religious meaning û which in turn included political implications for the colonized people.
After providing some cultural and historical background on the Sioux and on the role of music in American Indian cultures, this paper focuses on the music of the Sioux, relating it to other musical traditions of the regions where the Sioux lived as well as discussing its unique attributes. The final section of this paper examines the Sun Dance and the Ghost Dance as the two most important single types of musical performance (or rather integrated musical-dance-ritual performance) of the Sioux Indians.
Like other native groups, the Sioux lost much of what had defined them as a people with the coming of European settlers to the New World, including their own name for themselves. The Ojibwa word for the group, rendered into French by early explorers and traders as Nadouessioux, was shortened to Sioux and passed into English, and as such they remain known today, although members of the group have begun to add back their original name of ôLakotaö or ôDakotaö, which meant allies (Utley, 1994, p. 3).
The Sioux were not a single cultural group but rather an important confederacy of Native American tribes of the Siouan language family and of the Plains culture area. The seven allied tribes of the confederacy are classified into major divisions: the sedentary and agricultural Santee; the Nakota; and the warrior and buffalo-hunter ...