Indianist movement

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The Indianist movement was a movement in American classical music that flourished from the 1880s through the 1920s. It was based on attempts by classical composers to incorporate American Indian musical ideas with some of the basic principles of Western music, with the goal of creating a new, truly American national music.

Chief practitioners of the form included Charles Sanford Skilton, Arthur Nevin, Arthur Farwell, and Charles Wakefield Cadman. Many other composers also incorporated Native American music in their works at various points in their careers.^[1] In his book Imagining Native America in Music Michael Pisani argues that there was no such thing as an "Indianist" movement in American music, but that American composers' borrowing melodies of native America (beginning around 1890) was simply one part of a larger interest in the use of folk musics of all ethnicities on American soil. (A similar interest was expressed in the work of several classical composers of Central and South America, as well as in Europe at this time).^[2]