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Cherokee music, like other Cherokee art forms, was and continues to be an integral part of special ceremonies as well as daily life. Over the past three centuries, Cherokee music not only incorporated European American and African American traditions (fiddling, shape-note hymn singing, banjo playing, and string-band music), but influenced these traditions in return. Cherokee men sang to lead dances (the Bear Dance, the Eagle Dance, the Quail Dance, and the Horse Dance) in various traditional ceremonies.
Other traditional uses of song included the singing of prayer formulas. In the late nineteenth century, ethnologist James Mooney documented medicine formulas sung by shamans in healing rituals. Songs documented by Mooney were also associated with the going-to-water and sweat lodge ceremonies.
By the early nineteenth century, tribal members were learning Christian hymns from Moravian, Presbyterian, and Baptist missionaries. Following the introduction of Sequoyah's syllabary (a syllabary is a set of symbols that represent sounds or syllables of a language) in 1821, one of the first books printed in the Cherokee language and orthography was a hymn book. (Duke, 2007). During the Trail of Tears in 1838-39, the Cherokee sang Christian hymns "Amazing Grace" and "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah" in their native language while incarcerated in stockades and while being marched westward. Over one third of the twelve thousand Cherokee died in the infamous Nunna dual Tsuny (Trail Where They Cried), or "Trail of Tears." During this terrible trek, families sang songs in the traditional language to locate their kin and to bring comfort to the grieving. The Cherokee language and songs held the people together. Cherokee people still sing these songs to acknowledge the experiences of their ancestors during the Trail of Tears. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (the descendants of those who remained in the mountains of western North Carolina) kept alive traditions of instrumental fiddle music, of hymns in Cherokee, and of older, traditional Cherokee songs and dance music.
While many Cherokee practice the traditional religion and have revived it in recent decades, hymns and gospel music are also deeply ingrained in Cherokee culture. Perhaps ironically, the hymns now serve to keep the Cherokee language alive. When...