Image:Bice'waan Song.ogg

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library of congress recording, and before 1911 -- public domain traditional Omaha Indian song. From here

[edit] Notes

This song was collected by Alice Cunningham Fletcher and Francis La Flesche. It is included on Omaha Indian Music: Historical Recordings from the Fletcher/La Flesche Collection (AFC L71).

From the liner notes of the Omaha Indian Music album: Composers of love songs used melody and vocables to convey emotion (1893, pp. 53-54, 146-150; 1911, pp. 319-321).

The true love-song, called by the Omaha Bethae waan, an old designation and not a descriptive name, is sung generally in the early morning, when the lover is keeping his tryst and watching for the maiden to emerge from the tent and go to the spring. They belong to the secret courtship and are sometimes called Me-the-g'thun wa-an - courting songs. . . . They were sung without drum, bell or rattle, to accent the rhythm, in which these songs is subordinated to tonality and is felt only in the musical phrases. . . . Vibrations for the purpose of giving greater expression were not only affected by the tremolo of the voice, but they were enhanced by waving the hand, or a spray of artemesia before the lips, while the body often swayed gently to the rhythm of the song (Fletcher, 1894, p. 156).

George Miller's probable year of birth is 1852.

[edit] Public domain

Alice Cunningham Fletcher and Francis La Flesche collected this song. Fletcher died in 1923 and La Flesche in 1932, thus their copyrights on the recording have expired. The performer is Miller, George (Inke'tonga) (Big Shoulder), presumably an Omaha man. Since he was (probably) born in 1852, his copyright has clearly expired. The song is a folk song, and thus could not be said to have had any composer that could claim a copyright on the song text; to whatever extent one wanted to, such a copyright would have expired sometime in the early 20th century.

This image is in the public domain in countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years or less. Note that the United States has other rules and it is necessary to establish that this image is also in the public domain in the United States or to provide a use rationale. See Template:PD-US.

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