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| Richard Johnny John, with Jerome Rothenberg & Ian Tyson, Three Songs from Shaking the Pumpkin |
[Continued
from previous blogger & Jacket2 postings.
The Kinzua Dam construction referred to by Johnny John was a federal
& state project that drove many of the Allegany Senecas from their
traditional homes, to be “compensated” by new buildings but with losses still
keenly felt when we lived there.
Widespread protests in the 1950s had failed to halt the dam’s
construction. (J.R.)]
******
3/
Mostly these new songs that we make
up are for entertainment – like those gatherings we have, just to pass the time away, most of it. But
there are a few, especially those that have got words in them, that are more
serious. Like ever since they've started this Kinzua Dam, I guess everybody has
tried to make up songs about it and how it was going to affect the Indian and
everything, wondering where we were going to go after the Kinzua Dam really got
up to where it's supposed to be, up to where our old houses used to be, where
the water's all covered over now. Well, my brother Art's got one song that's
got quite a bit to say about that, and I've got one that's a little more, I
wouldn't say more criticizing the white people as Art's is, but maybe I've got a little more meaning to it, I guess I would say.
I
don't know if I can remember just how
that song did come to be. I guess one night, it was down at the longhouse at
the Singing Society, we had the singing there at the longhouse one evening, and
while we were singing at the middle of the council house there - we had the
singers' benches out and quite a few of us sitting there and singing - pretty
soon Harry Watt come up to me. I was sitting at the end of the bench, and he
says could you make up a song that would say something like what
was going to happen after the Kinzua Dam was in, and have a word or two saying
just let the Indians go back to heaven or something like that. It took me quite
a while before I finally did come up with one, and it has something about the
Kinzua Dam and about the Indians going back to heaven on account of the white
people taking our land away from us and putting water there where we used to
live. What I'm going to do is give you the idea of these two songs that's been
made up between my brother and me, and show you the older, original song I used
in making up mine. My brother made up the first song, and after Harry heard
this one, I think that's where he got the idea that he wanted to have something with more meaning to
it. Anyway, this is the way Art's song goes :
they're
going to do us dirt
they're
going to do us dirt
when
they come & build
a dam
at
allegany
we
won't know where to go
we
won't know where to go
when
they come & build
a dam
at
allegany
Now, the way I made up mine, I got it
from an old melody. This Canadian got married to one of the girls on our
reservation, and he used to sing this at our singing gatherings and practice
sessions, and this is the way it goes:
now
ain't that something!
say
the singers
of all
them pretty girls
not
one was dancing
yahweyho
yahweyho yahweyho
heyhono
noheyo
of
all them pretty girls
not
one was dancing
Well, afterwards Harry asked me to
make up the Kinzua song, and here's the
way I finally made it out:
now
ain't that something!
say
the singers
the dirt
we're being done
by
our white brothers
the
way we see it is
let's
all get up & go
back
to the sky let's
get
on back!
So, in this one I'd just say the
original idea was from that Canadian song and that it took me quite a long
while, maybe three, four weeks before I could really get it to where I wanted
it. I started off with the first introductory part, the first few words there,
then I couldn't put the rest of it together. I'd get just so far and then I'd get stuck. If I just started off and tried to sing it,
it didn't sound right to me,
so I had an awful time
before I could get it straight: the melody change in the second part and the
way I wanted to word it.
In
non-word songs you can get that quicker than you would the word songs. Like the word songs do have quite a lot of meaning into
them : like that one there, it's just more or less to remind us what has happened to
us. My idea of it was to save the song
as long as we can, and maybe in a few years some of the younger generation will
learn it, and like everybody else they ask questions about the song. But the
songs without words are just more or less for amusement, I guess. To make up
non-word songs like that, just change one sound to another and combine and
rearrange them some other different ways, and try to make a new song out of
them. There's no limit to the number of
sounds that you use: you can use as many as you can. The whole idea of it is to
try to combine and rearrange different sounds and see how many you can make up
that way. There may be some odd sound that maybe you heard it by somebody
saying something at one time or another, and you can try to get that certain
sound into a song. Like you're just talking with
somebody, and maybe he'd say some odd little thing like "hey yar" or
something like that, and maybe say " I
don't know," and then You say "No hey yoh see." That's how you change it. Maybe he's
talking along, and maybe he'll say quite a few such words as that: then after
you've talked with him, you sit around and think of what he has said and pretty
soon you can almost get a song out of it. It's not every song that's made up that
way, but mostly when you combine sounds and melody, you have to think what
sounds should go into the melody you're trying to follow. You have to follow a
pattern. You can almost make up the words as you go along just as it comes to
your mind, I guess, and then try to pull them
together and make a good song out of it.
Maybe sometimes
it does come out all right and sounds pretty good, and sometimes it's just the
opposite. You get the melody in and then you can't get the sounds together to
make it sound right. You can say it gets kind of muddled up there for a while
and then takes quite a while to get it straightened out.
Some
of the sounds that we use are more or less fixed. Like most of the woman's
dance songs start out before the introductory part with "heya" and "yo-oh-ho" or something
like that. (Some of the other dance songs, they
just start out without having them sounds with it.) Then I think most of the
songs, even the different dances, use a lot of the "0" in them:
"ho," "yo" and "0" I guess are the most popular
in all these different dance songs. I believe in all these different dances
they hav'e got a lot of that in there. Like
going into the middle of the song, you use a lot of that.
Like
I say, you have to follow a pattern. There are even some sounds we have that you may say rhyme or repeat
themselves. Like the sounds in the introductory part. You use the whole
introductory, and then in the middle and end parts you rhyme it back or repeat
it. A lot of woman's dance songs are made up that way. The oldtimers used to
try to make it that way, but now there's so many different songs and sounds
that you hear, we've kind of worked away from it a little bit, like us
combining three, four different songs at once, so in that way you can't very
well rhyme with the first part. Anyway, it's all according to how the song is
started out. If you can get the beginning part, the introductory, from there
you can go on to try to combine other sounds with it. Then you have to get the
pitch of the song to it. I guess all composers have the same trouble as we do,
even some of these great composers, the modern-day composers of English songs.
Sometimes they have the words there, they have the lyrics there, and still they
don't, they won't, they can't be satisfied with how it's going to sound like in
the melody part. Maybe the sound is there and you want to use it, and still in
your melody that you're trying to think of at the same time, it won't fit in. Or
maybe the sound that you're thinking of is too long to go into the melody, and
then sometimes maybe it's too short: then you have to add on a few other sounds
to go
with it and then fit that into the
melody. Sometimes I come to see it that the sound and melody kind of contradict
each other, and that sometimes gets real complicated that way; It's not, as you
would say, that it makes a song better. It just takes a little more thinking to
that: sometimes it turns out to be a big joke after a while.
With
these social dances at the longhouse, we're there just to have a lot of fun anyway, while with the sacred
dances we're thinking more serious of what is going on. You think that
these sacred songs will help the person, whoever is sponsoring them, whatever
the doings are; and I guess, to my opinion, it has helped a lot of people - the sacred dances, that
is. But even there, the attitude all depends on how the person sponsoring the
doings is feeling. Like if the speaker tells
us that the person who is sponsoring the doings is feeling all right, well,
he notifies us right
away that we can have a little fun.
That's why we get into all these comical acts that we put on when we're dancing these pumpkin songs, for
instance, just to have the sponsor have a
little fun with us. Sometimes that does happen: sometimes
he clowns more than the rest of the group does, so that's a good indication
that the song does help him quite a bit.
All
of this has been brought down from the time the Gaiwiio came on the earth. They had been dancing all these songs before, and now
the Prophet of the Senecas had tried to stop it at that time; but later on this
little girl got sick, and they tried to get the Prophet to tell her fortune. It took him a long time before he
consented to tell the fortune of this little girl, and that's what he found: it was a song that was bothering this little girl! It
was one of those society songs - you know, like the
Dark Dance and the Quivering and Changing-a-Rib and the Death
Chant - and, well, at that time the Four Beings
had told him that people should cut out all the dance songs that were on this
earth. But later on the Beings came back again, and they told him that if it
couldn't be stopped, then it was to continue. Before the Gaiwiio came on earth, you know, they used to have hard drinks at all these doings; but
after they had come back, they told him that if the dancing or the songs couldn't be stopped that one time, that they could have the
berry juice, like what we use now in the Dark
Dance ceremony. And they told him at that time that there was just going to be
just that once, but after they did have this once for this little girl,
everybody else started to get sick about something, so from then on, they started to do all these
different songs and dances that they had before the Gaiwiyo came to earth. Nowadays, with most of
the dances that we do, we think this is the way it should have been done
years ago. but I know- we have lost quite a bit
from what the oldtimers used to do and what they believed in. Today it's just,
/ guess, to keep it up as far as we can go with it.
The
sacred songs, like I've said before, are already in
a set group : their letting has never changed. A
long time ago people were traveling in the woods -there was a lot of traveling
in the woods then - and they kind of heard these
songs in a way. Like the Dark Dance there: this one night, this young lad was
sleeping out: pretty soon he heard all these voices, and he didn't know where they were coming from . So he kind of crept around in the dark, and pretty soon
he found a little group.
There was a little group
there, all in a cave, and it was awful dark, and they were singing these songs. That's why they call it the Dark Dance.
Then later on, as the story goes,
this other little boy was picked up and was taken way up on the high ledges of these mountains, and when these birds
brought him up there (he didn't know what they were at the time), but when the birds took him up on this high cliff (they
had a nest there), well, as they
landed he seen these little birds kind of fluttering around, going through all
different motions, and one of the young birds was kind of squawking away and
making it into a song like. Well, the little boy stayed there maybe ten or
twelve days with these birds, and he kept feeding them; and one night, one
evening where you can still see late in the afternoon, the older birds got
together and they were doing this Eagle Dance, and they were Singing these
songs, and that's how he happened to learn the Eagle Dance songs. Up till
today, the way they dance is the imitation of the Eagle going after a piece of
meat on the ground: that's why you can see them go down something like a bird
pecking at a piece of meat. And that's how the Eagle Dance come to be.
But
that way of getting songs and dances, I guess that's way past our stage. I
guess we're too civilized nowadays, cause at that time, see, they practically
lived right with the animals and out in the woods all the time. They didn't have no automobiles or airplanes
flying around or anything of that sort, and they were so close to nature, I
guess that's how they probably got to get some of these songs together. A lot
of stories, different stories, has been told of how these songs originated, and
all of it starts with them coming from the different animals that were roaming
the big forest at that time. And in the mountains and places like that, along
the rivers, you can hear all these different kind of songs that was made up. Then as it came along, these persons that had heard
these songs had started handing them down to the younger generation, up till
today. Like me learning these songs: I learnt that from me going to all these
different dances when I was
a young lad, just a young kid at that time, just a little boy. Well, I started
dancing the Eagle Dance when I was just about eight or nine years old. So now
you can see how we carry our religion and traditions and all that. Most of us
that had lived right along where the longhouse is, still believe in this
religion, and we try to keep up the traditions as
our older folks had done
years before, and I think that's just the way it's been handed down all down
through the years, from generation to generation, as far as I know of.
