Native American music in elementary music

Although I use music from a variety of cultures and traditions regularly in all grade levels throughout the school year, I spend about a month focusing on the music from a particular culture in each grade. Today's focus: Native America! I'm including links to all of the articles I've written on music of other countries / cultures at the end of this post, so be sure to read to the end for more world music lesson ideas!

I study Native American music with my kindergarten students. I always choose which cultures to focus on for each grade based on the content I can reinforce through the study, and in this case I am able to use Native American music to focus on steady beat, same and different sections, and basic movement such as left and right and circle formations.

The first song I like to teach is Wee Hee Nah. You can find an audio recording and game directions for the song here. I love this song because there is so much you can do with it! First I have students march in a circle on the steady beat while I play the song on the recorder. Then I have a small group of students play the beat on hand drums (I break out the bigger ones for this for extra cool factor!) while the rest of us continue to walk while I play the melody. This is a great way to get them to practice moving with the beat and listening to the music, since they aren't singing along yet! Once they can all keep the steady beat and keep a circle formation while walking, we sit down and I teach them the words to the song. At this point they have already heard the melody many times, so it's pretty easy for them to learn. Then I ask them if they notice any patterns in the song. This is a great way to talk about same and different phrases, because the first two measures are different and the last two measures are the same as the middle two measures. Then we repeat the circle formation, walking on the beat, while singing. If students are doing well with the steady beat, I will break out a few shakers, and I have a couple of students play the shaker on steady eighth notes while continuing to walk in the circle and sing. This provides an extra challenge for the more advanced students! Once they can do all of that, I teach them the game. It is very similar to London Bridge, so we usually play that game the class before and I make the connection to that game when we learn Wee Hee Nah. The students love it and everyone gets lots of practice with steady beat and instruments!

After they have learned the song, I talk with the students a little bit about the different tribes within Native American culture, especially focusing on the tribes that were/are native to our area. I would encourage you, if you are considering incorporating this in your own classroom, to look into the native traditions in your area (or whatever is closest to you) if you are in North America. It is a wonderful way for students to connect something that can seem so foreign to their own lives.

I like to show students a little bit of what a pow wow looks like. You can find tons of examples on YouTube- you might want to try to find an example of one from your area- but here is one example:

Then we talk about how these cultures are being preserved today, and we watch snippets of some videos that show more current examples, like the ones in this playlist. Afterwards, we watch an example of a modern Native American musician like this one (these musicians are from Canada- I include examples from all over North America but it's important to always note the specific area/ tribe they are from when you share examples with students). I have used several different videos for this in the last few years but I always look for one that has clearly distinguished sections in its form. After we watch and discuss some of the elements of the music and visuals that are modern vs traditional, we listen to the music again and I have students move with the steady beat, telling them to switch to a different move when the music changes to a new "part". 

Those are some examples of lessons I teach for Native American music. Do you teach Native American music in your class? I'd love to see any additional ideas and resources you have in the comments below!

1. Brazil

2. Mozambique

3. China

4. Native American

5. Phillippines
6. Ireland

7. Maori (Native New Zealand)

8. Bolivia

9. Japan

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