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Show Nnngs of the Zuni Kachina Society *<>ngs, consisting of the melody and often the words of Medicine Society Songs, but with the structure of Kachina Society Songs, \atto-wc, 'Topped Songs'. Medicine Society members within each MV.I group, quite naturally, are the main composers and leaders of the singing, drumming, and dancing of these songs. They add short pauses and entire half-time sections, called tomo??aiiJoiut, to the *ongs which they had to memorize when they entered the society and which they cannot, within the context of the Medicine Society, change in any way. The popularity of these "Topped Songs" is partly attributable to their paradoxical status: the composer "plays" with what would normally be rigid. Within the Log Drum genre, the hilili and its variant ya77ana are the favorites. They are the simplest mclodically and textually and the most complex rhythmically. For a visual comparison of the general pitch contours of a hypothetical Kachina Call, Bundle Drum, and Log Drum Song, sec figure 2.3. These drawings were made by a Zuni man who is a kachina dancer, song composer, and Medicine Society member. He made the three songs equally long, though Kachina Call Songs in actual performance average 20 minutes in length, while Bundle Drum Songs average 10 minutes, and Log Drum Songs la.st only about 3 minutes. When I asked him why, he explained that when you learn a Log Drum Song it is just as "long" a* n Kachina Call Song, but that "when you sing it and dance real fast you just clip off parts of it." He seemed to be saying that all Kachina Dance Songs have the same amount of content but are performed at different speeds and therefore, last different amounts "f time. Another startling thing about the Log Drum Song contour, in comparison with that of the Kachina Call Song, is the extreme contrast in their respective heights. He explained that Kachina Call Songs sound like "the Zuni Mountains," or else "like going up M.tirs," whereas the Log Drum pattern is "a lot flatter, more like a rut~sa." He indicated two sharp pauses in the Log Drum contour, one after the first "talking about" section and the other at the end of the song. These sharp pauses occur only in hilili and yd77ana, the fastest (M.M.J = 208-220) of all Zuni dances. This wildly fast rhythm, combined with fancy dance steps, suddenly slops dead at the sharp pause and there must be an absolute simultaneity of drum, dance, and song silences or else, in Zuni opinion, the dance n ruined. This complex rhythmic development in the Log Drum 25 |
