Inspired by the thread on stereotypical Chinese music in old movies, could anybody tell me where that music originates that they always play in old Hollywood films when the Injuns appear on the horizon. Sort of Daah-dah-dah-DAH-daah.
Are you talking about the open-fifths thing?
I haven’t a clue as I can’t read music. It’s the musical motif that ALWAYS accompanies the appearance of the injuns in a 50s western.
Just a guess, but I would check out the Oscar-winning score of .Stagecoach (1939), when the Apaches attack.
do you mean Theme from Dragnet (Danger Ahead)
The idea of the Dragnet theme announcing the Indians is irresistable, but I think the theme we’re talking about goes (and sorry about the clumsy musical notation):
A, G A-E-E, D E-A-A
With the last two As being lower. Played over the sound of tom-toms beating.
There is a passage in Dvoraks “American Symphony” that sounds very much like cliched Hollywood “injun music”. Anyone who’s heard the symphony will know what I’m talking about.
I’ve always wondered if a lot of the film music was based on Dvorak.
Spectre nailed it. Antonin Dvorak composed his Symphony No 9 - “From the New World” in the 1890s. The Third movement, which some scholars say was adapted from a planned operatic treatment of the Hiawatha legend, was immitated or outright stolen by early film composers who wanted music that “sounded” Native American.
The Dvorak “Indian” theme isn’t the same as the theme I sketched above. It’s not the cliché you hear in movies.
Is it the chant heard from the crowd at Florida State Seminoles games?