Shitting Bull

When painting, artists often mix two colors to create a new color. Red and yellow combine to make orange. Blue with red creates purple. And, of course, yellow and blue make green. Colors found opposite of each other on the color wheel are called complementary colors, because, when put next to each other complements make each other appear brighter. However, when you attempt to mix two complementary colors together you end up with a brown lump of shit.

It is my assertion that "Mother Earth" by Sharon Burch is a brown lump of shit. "Traditional Indian music has virtually no connection in sound, style or aesthetics with the European- and African-based traditions that have dominated music making in this country." (Crawford, page 397) In attempting to combine traditional Indian music and Jewel-inspired-adult-contemporary-singer-songwriter-acoustic-pop music, Burch has attempted to combine two polar opposites. The resulting mutation does a disservice to both musical genres.

The timbral elements of "Mother Earth" include a female voice and a finger-picked acoustic guitar. First off, Native Americans didn’t have acoustic guitars. Native American singing is most usually accompanied by non-tuned rhythmic instruments (such as shakers, rattles, or drums) rather than any melodic instrument such as a guitar. Even the style of playing is less effective than it could be. If the guitar was played chordally, in a percussive manner it may have sounded more authentic Indian rather than the metric finger-picking style that is more reminiscent of either folk-rock or classical guitar playing. Second off, Sharon Burch’s voice is too pretty. Traditional Indian music is functional and therefore there is not the distinction of audience member versus performer. Everyone is a performer. The vocal timbre is much rougher in our samples of the authentic Native American music. Because the singing often accompanies a dance or some other physical activity there is a more muscular quality to the voice, somewhere closer to chanting than singing, as opposed to Burch’s velvety coffeehouse vibe.

The vocal melody is made up of the scale D, E, F#, A, and B – a major pentatonic scale. While this could be considered as a Native American influence it is not strong enough of an influence to define the music as Native American because the pentatonic is used by other cultures and musical genres as diverse as traditional Asian music to American blues music.

Harmonically the song only has three chords: consisting of mostly D major, sometimes E minor, and much less frequently what sounds like an A7 chord which is missing the leading tone of C#. The omission of this leading tone makes the chord more ambiguous as there is no tri-tone generated, and this tri-tone is the most structurally important interval of the dominant chord that makes it want to resolve to its tonic. It seems to me that the leading tone was omitted to conform to the pentatonic scale dictated by the melody, but in doing so the song has suffered a loss of energy due to decreased harmonic movement. On the other hand, the middle chord tone of E minor (G) is a very prevalent harmony and effectively changes the 5-note scale to a 6-note scale.

Native American music lacks time signatures. This does not mean that it is not metric, it is very metric, however because rhythm is such an important element it is sometimes complex in ways foreign to our ears. For example, John Comfort Fillmore’s transcription of the Omaha "Song of Approach" (Crawford, page 401) features something I’ve never seen before – two time signatures written right next to each other at the beginning of the piece. The song alternates between 2/4 and 3/4 time, but not in a predictable manner – with 4 bars of 2/4, followed by 2 bars of 3/4, then 4 bars of 2/4, followed by one bar of 3/4, and so on in a non-repeating manner. "Mother Earth" is in a steady 6/8 time signature. I’m not sure if I could explain why, but this to me sounds like the most UN-Native American time signature possible.

The homophonic texture of "Mother Earth" can be found in both the vocal line during vocal passages and the uppermost voice in the guitar during the instrumental parts. As authentic Native American music is vocally based it would not even contain these extended instrumental sections.

Her record company’s website states that Sharon Burch's music is the contemporary expression of traditional Navajo ways and living. I think it’s crap. "Mother Earth" does not hold any of the rhythmic excitement or complexity of traditional Native American music. Its timbral elements, both voice and guitar, are in no way authentic. Even the five-tone scale system is not strictly adhered to. Just about the only thing that sounds Navajo to me about this song is that the lyrics are in Navajo. And in reference to this: "while words in everyday language are sometimes sung, many songs feature syllables that seem to have no meaning (vocables)." (Crawford, page 398) So in filling her song with Navajo words, Sharon Burch has somehow succeeded in making her song even less Navajo.