Dan-I
While not a Native American myself, I grew up on a reservation, most of my friends are Natives, and I had no choice but to be completely immersed in Native American culture (this is a tribe of Anishinabe/Ojibwe/Chippewas in northern Minnesota, btw). There are lots of different types of songs, but it sounds like you’re talking about the typical sort of pow-wow song that would usually by performed by several people pounding on one drum and singing. Actually, these songs tend to follow a sort of verse-chorus-verse structure, just like most pop music. How it works is this: there’s typically a sort of ‘lead singer’ who will start out the song with a verse, which will actually have lyrics, although they may be incomprehensible because they are often sung in a high wailing voice without much enunciation of syllables. Then the rest of the singers join in, and the ‘chorus’ may be made up of either lyrics or just a general wailing sound. Often in songs like these even if there are lyrics most of the singers won’t know them and will just wail along.
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