November is Native American Heritage Month

Lincoln City Libraries celebrates Native American Heritage Month with a Native American read-in and book displays. A display in the Polley Music Library features books on the music on Native Americans. Some of those included are:

• The art of the native American flute, by R. Carlos Nakai and James Demars


• Choctaw music and dance, by James H. Howard and victoria Lindsay Levine


• Flute magic: an introduction to the native American flute, by Tim R. Crawford


• Myth, music and dance of the American Indian, by Ruth De Cesare


• The Power of Kiowa song, by Luke E. Lassiter


• Putting a song on top of it: expression and identity on the San Carlos Apache Reservation, by David W. Samuels


• Songprints: the musical experience of five Shoshone women, by Judith Vander


• Southern Cheyenne women's songs, by Virginia Giglio


• A study of Omaha Indian music, by Alice C. Fletcher


• War dance: plains Indian musical performance, by William K. Powers


• We'll be in your mountains, we'll be in your songs: a Navajo woman sings, by Ellen McCullough-Brabson and Marilyn Help

Of course the library has other resources on Native American music -- compact discs and the Smithsonian Global Sounds database, to name a couple.

One of the best resources on the web for Native American music is in the American Memories project of the Library of Congress, using sources from the American Folklife Center Archives. Check out the Omaha Indian Music page.

Nebraska, too, has many ties to Indianist composers who used Native American music, through inspiration or adptation. Thurlow Lieurance, Derrick Norman Lehmer, and Charles Wakefield Cadman all spent time in Nebraska with Indianist compositional leanings. Some Indianist pieces are included in the Music of Old Nebraska project on the Polley Music Library web page.