Is there Native American music in American Music?

There is always music playing with me. I am soaking in it. There is nothing I would rather do, if I am not playing music with my hands with other people, than to listen to music or talk about music. As I have been fortunate enough to live more than 50 years, the available library of All The Music Ever Recorded is what I have to choose from.  Music is the wet in the water. The up in the sky. The reason math explains life. It is the voice of God that comes out of us and we all understand….

My younger daughter once posed the question. “Do you like American Music?” My first response was to to react badly to the thought of pop music, which I don’t care for much at this age. At this moment, there is some intoxicating gift playing from some other part of the world; Dobet Gnahoré, Fela Kuti, Sanjay Mishra.… and as I write, the music of Sean Blackman and  Mickey Hart - both Americans playing the music of the world. And any minute, on any one of the music boxes in my house,  something from either Miles Davis or Jerry Garcia is likely to pop up. America came from somewhere else. We all brought our songs. All American music started somewhere else. All music is World Music. Music is One Voice.

As a drummer and jazz lover, the story of how the music I love came to be born is a fascinating, easily tracked story, with brave and brilliant characters. The heros of my music are African. Their stories travel from Guinea and Ghana and Nigeria to England and Cuba and Latin America; to New York and San Francisco and Boise Idaho.  I can hear through Jazz and Jams and rock and roll and blues who our parents are and how the world transcended and included its roots.

Then a beautiful song by Robbie Robertson called “Mahk Jchi (Heartbeat Drum Song).

That just twisted my root map all up. What about Aboriginal American music? Where is the music of the First Americans? Where is Native American Music in American music? I feel completely naive. Did we include American music in American music and I cannot hear it? Is there a motif or a signature somewhere in the songs of our day to day that include the first songs people played in this land?  Did we let it slip away?

I could use some more information…..