Pacific Northwest Coast Music

The nations of the Pacific Northwest Coast — including the Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuu-chah-nulth, and Coast Salish peoples — share a coastal environment that shaped musical traditions closely tied to the cedar tree, the salmon, and the ocean. Music in these traditions is typically owned: songs are property, passed down within clans or families, displayed publicly at potlatches alongside the distribution of wealth. A potlatch song sung by the wrong person is a serious cultural offence. The big house (longhouse) is the principal performance space; large painted drums are beaten while masked dancers re-enact ancestral stories and spirit encounters. Instruments include large cedar plank drums, hand drums, rattles of various materials (puffin beaks, deer hooves, shells), and whistles that represent supernatural voices. Choral singing by groups of singers accompanies most ceremonies. The revival of these traditions in the late 20th century — after decades of suppression under the Canadian potlatch ban (1885–1951) — is one of the most significant cultural stories in North America.