Europeans have mixed with the Indians and the Negros, and Negros have mixed with the Indians. Influence is the driving force behind musical creation and development, while religious dogma helped to suppress “unholy” musical harmonies of Native American music and blues. Africans and Indigenous People would have heard each other’s music, thus been influenced by hearing it. Racism surrounding existence of Black Indians, along with the issue of Native American identity also contributed to Native Americans not receiving credit for helping to form blues, jazz, and rock. The historical white man still decides who is and isn’t Indian.
Influence by listening, not by reading music on paper (without being able to hear written music in the inner ear), is what makes new music. Or, seeing art in all its forms inspires new tonalities and genres to be written and performed. When Africans were forced across the globe as part of the American Holocaust, they necessarily brought their polyrhythmic music with them.
Africans forced into slavery were “allowed” to go to church, where they heard western harmony in church hymnals, then their slave songs (that gave us the blues) with harmony from the hymnals gave us the very first negro spirituals, then jazz (yes, it's oversimplified here). Then, as Muddy Waters said, “The blues had a baby, and they named the baby Rock and Roll.”
Religious dogma helped to suppress “unholy” musical harmonies of Native American music and blues. Consider this. Native Americans and African Americans used the same basic scale in their music. What is a scale? A musical scale is a series of notes used to compose music, there are “church modes.”
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We name our modes after Medieval Church modes, which were named after Ancient Greek modes, which were named after ethnic regions in Ancient Greece famous for that kind of sound.
And then there’s the blues with its “satanic” blues scale, that gave the world “Satan's music.”
Historically, there's a complex, even antagonistic, relationship between the blues — the devil's music, Satan's music — and the church in the black community. A lot of blues players, many of them women, left the church to pursue a career in the blues, and ended up going back at the end of their days. In Warming by the Devil's Fire, we mentioned how Son House, who was a preacher at one time, went to jail for murder in self defense, came out, tried to be a preacher again, then went back to playing the blues. "Georgia Tom" (whose real name was Thomas A. Dorsey) wrote sexually graphic songs for Bessie Smith and others, then he went and wrote some wonderful, lyrical religious compositions later on. Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Reverend Gary Davis did the same thing.
African Americans and American Indians were both demonized for their music. There is the “evil blues scale” (a five note scale plus another “evil” note resulting in a tritone), and the “holy” five note scale, or major pentatonic scale, that gives us “Amazing Grace.” The blues scale’s second note is one half step lower (just think of playing any key on the piano and going down a black or white key), than the “holy” major pentatonic scale is (“...zing grace” in “Amazing Grace”). So too, soldiers accused Native Americans of witchcraft, because the soldiers fell asleep in teepees listening to flute music (a Cheyenne flute maker told me that). African Americans and Native Americans sang songs using the identical five note scale. That scale with the blues scale is the most commonly used scale in blues and rock. It is not the mostly used scale in the hymns that led to the spirituals.
Racism surrounding existence of Black Indians robbed Native Americans of credit. Hendrix, who was part Cherokee, was influenced by Muddy Waters,
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YES! Magazine: Documentary explores Native influence in music
The documentary Rumble: The Indians That Rocked the World, which airs on PBS in January, addresses the larger contribution Natives made to music. It’s an important story with many layers that involves both the human and cultural genocide that came with European conquest. The film showcases a lot of musical talent, though the legendary Wray is arguably only the fourth greatest Native guitar player—after Jesse Ed Davis (who played with Taj Mahal, Jackson Browne, and John Lennon), Robbie Robertson, and Jimi Hendrix... Hendrix’s genealogy, which included Native roots on both sides of his family tree as well as his African American ancestry (and many Hendrix fans didn’t know that his song “Cherokee Mist” was in part a homage to his grandmother).
Have you ever heard of Charley Patton?
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Charley Patton (died April 28, 1934), also known as Charlie Patton, was an American Delta blues musician. Considered by many to be the "Father of the Delta Blues",
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Patton was considered African-American, but because of his light complexion there has been much speculation about his ancestry over the years. One theory endorsed by blues musician Howlin' Wolf was that Patton was Mexican or Cherokee. It is now generally agreed that Patton was of mixed heritage, with white, black, and Native ancestors. Some believe he had a Cherokee grandmother;[6] however, it is also widely asserted by historians that he was between one-quarter and one-half Choctaw.[7]
Why isn’t it common knowledge Charlie Parker had the same Native American heritage as his mother?
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Legendary jazz musician Charlie Parker was born Charles Christopher Parker Jr. on August 29, 1920, in Kansas City, Kansas. His father, Charles Parker, was an African-American stage entertainer, and his mother, Addie Parker, was a maid-charwoman of Native-American heritage. An only child, Charlie moved with his parents to Kansas City,
Jazz composers wrote songs with many blues forms, then added another section perhaps. Native American music also influenced jazz with its use of the pentatonic scale, of which contains numerous blues compositions by every jazz composer using that scale. Find me a jazz composer who didn’t write a blues song .
Africans and Indigenous People would have heard each other’s music, thus been influenced by hearing it.
Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage (Hardcover) by William Loren Katz
Preface to This Printing
At the Congress of Angostura in 1819, liberator Simon Bolivar was elected president of Venezuela and planned a strategy that would free the Americas of European domination. He found it necessary to clarify America’s racial heritage: “It is impossible to say to which human family we belong. The larger part of the Native population has disappeared, Europeans have mixed with the Indians and the Negros, and Negros have mixed with the Indians. We were all born of one mother America, though our fathers had different origins, and we all have differently colored skins. This dissimilarity is of the greatest significance.”
And for instance, in 1741, an 800-foot-long coffle of recently enslaved Sioux Indians, procured by a group of Cree, Assiniboine, and Monsoni warriors, arrived in Montreal, ready for sale to French colonists hungry for domestic and agricultural labor. Is it really possible that Africans and American Indians who had offspring with one another - never heard each other's music?
Bolivar’s insight is still revelation to most Americans. Black Indians, designed for schools and young adult readers, immediately stirred adult controversy. Reading it on New York City subways, radio talk show host Gary Bird was confronted by people upset by its cover, topic, and title. Looking at the title, one infuriated rider shouted, “There were not!”
Africans and Native Americans listened to the same five note “devil’s music” scale with either complex or simple rhythms behind them. The spirituals influenced Elvis, and Miles Davis influenced Dave Brubeck.
The issue of Native American identity also contributed to Native Americans not receiving credit for helping to form blues, jazz, and rock. Three main points contribute to Indigenous identity, according to Hilary N. Weaver. Those are self-identification, community identification, and external identification. As far as I know, Hendrix, Patton, and Bird did not self identify, nor were part of any Native American community. However, they all have family stories that may or may not have had accurate birth certificates, or external identification, in which is “evidence” of Native American identity.
Currently, there is an issue involving First Nation identity, in which the general public may not be completely respecting the sovereignty of the Piapot Cree.
A new Canadian Broadcast Corporation investigation has raised questions about the Indigenous identity of Buffy Sainte-Marie.
The singer-songwriter, considered to be the first Indigenous Oscar winner for co-writing the song “Up Where We Belong” from 1982’s “An Officer and a Gentleman,” has long claimed she was born on a Piapot Cree reservation in 1941 in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Sainte-Marie was then adopted by white parents as part of a Canadian government policy known as the Sixties Scoop.
Referring back to Weaver, Sainte-Marie self-identifies, has community identification, yet her external identification — according to a new Canadian Broadcast Corporation and her white sisters — is questionable. If the CBC and Saint-Marie’s white sisters respected the sovereignty of the Piapot Cree, they would let it go.
The acting chief of Piapot First Nation says his community will not turn its back on Buffy Sainte-Marie after an investigation by CBC's The Fifth Estate revealed information that contradicts the songwriter's claims to Indigenous ancestry.
"I can relate and understand to a lot of our people who feel betrayed and in a sense lied to by her claiming Indigenous ancestry, when in fact she may not be Indigenous," said Ira Lavallee.
"When it comes to Buffy specifically we can't pick and choose which part of our culture we decide to adhere to.… We do have one of our families in our community that did adopt her. Regardless of her ancestry, that adoption in our culture to us is legitimate."
Yet, Saint-Marie’s family members “believe her story is an elaborate fabrication,” which is supported by documents obtained by the CBC . If Hendrix, Patton, or Bird did self - identify in a similar situation, I bet the same thing would happen.
My biological father said he had no Native heritage, my biological mother said there were stories about Native origins in Oklahoma. I was always honest about being adopted, never said I was Cherokee like the family story was. I said I don't know. I got 2 DNA tests. I got the word of a biologist on the phone that my grandparents would've been 2/3 Native American on my mother's side. My indigenous heritage comes primarily from the Amazon and Brazil, there were some traces of DNA here that would've correlated the family story, but not enough to put that in what the biologist classified as Cherokee AD Mix. I sent lots of documentation, including my extremely difficult to acquire original adoption papers to the Metis Nation of the US, which is connected to the Metis in Canada. My biological mother forbids my sisters to talk to me.
I never tried to be something I wasn't, the Native Americans in my community here with which I am a part of accept me as I am, as being Native American and Metis . My point is, that my first birth certificate was incorrect. My second birth certificate was incorrect, and that one was supposed to be right, because it was from when my biological mother had me with a man not my biological father. The only thing right about that, was it had her maiden name and birthday, along with the man she was married to temporarily. Families are notorious for keeping skeletons in the closet, and I was the skeleton.
The Cherokee Nation uses the Dawes Rolls out of necessity, not because they don’t know the agents changed names and so on.
In breaking the reservations up into individually owned allotments, the first step was to put together a tribal roll. Regarding Indian names on these tribal rolls, Sioux physician Charles Eastman wrote:
“Originally, the Indians had no family names, and confusion has been worse confounded by the admission to the official rolls of vulgar nicknames, incorrect translations, and English cognomens injudiciously bestowed upon children in the various schools.”
Government concern for Indian names, particularly surnames, was directly connected with allotments. The allotments came under territory and state inheritance laws. All of these laws were based on Euro-American family relationships and therefore the result was confusion if an allottee died intestate and local officials had to determine the heirs.
In 1890, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs ordered Indian names on the reservations to be changed so that each Indian would be given an English Christian name and retain the surname. Surnames were to be translated to English and shortened if they were too long. Care was to be taken to avoid translations of Indian names that might be offensive to non-Indians. The new names were to be explained to the Indians.
Birth certificates for First Nation identity are not completely accurate. Furthermore, the context is denial after genocide has been committed.
Birth Registration and the Administration of White Supremacy Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 August 2022
Birth registration formed a key part of the administration of white supremacy between Reconstruction and World War II. In the allotment of Indigenous lands and the enforcement of de jure segregation by states, birth registration served an important ideological and administrative function. Because allotment policy combined property transmission with family reorganization, it made documentation of identity more important to the federal Indian Office.
The historical white man still decides who is and isn’t Indian. If you’re not brown enough, you’re white. If you’re Black and Indian, you’re Black. If you’re Hispanic, you’re not Indigenous, you’re Spanish. If you’re Indian, you’re in the past. Europeans have mixed with the Indians and the Negros, and Negros have mixed with the Indians.
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” Malcolm X
