When I was at Tulsa University forty years ago, it was said that Music was always the last of the muses to "catch up" when real artistic work was being done. For years I heard Indians say that Louis Ballard didn't write "Indian Music" and I always said that they were being "hicks" and didn't know what they were talking about. Now that he's gone (and had to take all of that guff) others are now benefiting, getting the message and catching up with the painters who gave up wood planks, berry dyes and bird yokes one hundred years ago. No, these aren't Wannabee Europeans, they are Indian Artists expressing Indian realities in the best available tools and thinking. REH

PS I don't agree with the "dying out" comment below. Traditional music should be researched, practiced, honed to perfection and kept as the way that we touch our ancestors. However, new music is who we are old music is the way that we inhabit who our ancestors were for a few brief moments.

American Indian Composers Go Classical
By Felix Contreras


Composer Jerod Tate never thought his classical training could merge with his American Indian heritage until he started composing.

hear the music. Hear how Native American composers mix their heritage with techniques passed down from the European classical tradition.

Jerod Tate: 'Iholba'
Katherine Fogden (photo) Timothy Archambault, at the National Museum of the American Indian's "Classical Native" series.


"I would really like to see native America find that fusion that would create its own genre."Steven Alvarez Katherine Fogden (photo) Mescalero Apache composer Steven Alvarez hopes the classical native movement will offer American Indians a new musical voice.

All Things Considered, January 1, 2009 - A small but growing number of American Indian musicians are embracing classical music.

Drawing as much from European composers as traditional American Indian harvest songs, the music and the musicians are getting noticed in concert halls and on reservations.

Composer Timothy Archambault used to play his traditional American Indian wood flute in private, strictly as a way to stay connected with his Kichesipirini Algonquin ancestors.

Then three years ago, he was invited to perform at the first "Classical Native" series sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of the American Indian.

There, he met other native composers who wanted to write music for his flute. Composers like George Quincy, who wrote Choctaw Diaries and performed it with Archambault this year.

Archambault says he's been intrigued by what he's heard from other American Indian composers at the Smithsonian gatherings.

"The compositions are intellectually stimulating," Archambault says.

"They're not dismal, one-dimensional works. They've studied the Western tradition; they've studied their own American Indian traditions, which are dying out. You hear that merging with Western tonality and harmony, and that is intriguing, that is something totally new."

Mixing Identities

That's how it was for Chickasaw composer Jerod Tate - until his mother, a professor of dance and a professional choreographer, asked him to write music for a ballet she created. He'd been studying European classical piano and composition.

"I didn't mix my identities of being a classically trained musician and being an American Indian," Tate says. "I never saw that there was even a possible relationship between those two until I started composing. And that's when they came together in a way that made me feel just wonderful."

Since 1992, Tate has been exploring his culture through classical music, and his work has been performed by orchestras in Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, New Mexico and San Francisco.

Tate compares his work to that of contemporary Indian painters who abstract cultural icons, such as feathers and horses. In his work, Tate recasts American Indian musical icons such as flutes and drums. Like many classically trained American Indians, Tate's gone back to explore his cultures. The combination of the two musical worlds, he says, has an unexpected benefit for tradition.

"Not only are American Indians expressing contemporary expressions like this," Tate says. "But they're also going back and learning their traditions very well, along with dancing and language. So they're both kind of moving parallel with each other."

Mixing European classical with indigenous and folk music is nothing new.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries European composers such as Antonin Dvorak and Bela Bartok drew from European folk music. And in 1935, Mexican composer Carlos Chavez wrote his Sinfonia India, drawing on his country's indigenous music. But it would take another half-century before American Indians began to embrace classical music to express their cultural identity.

In the 1950s, composer Louis Ballard was inspired by Bartok to write chamber, orchestral and choral music as well as ballets that incorporated his own Quapaw and Cherokee background. Ballard's work gained acclaim, and he continued to compose until his death in 2007.

First Nations Initiative

But much of the work of other American Indians experimenting with the two styles remained below the radar until the first convention of American Indian composers was held in Boulder, Colo., in 1994.

Since then, composers have received commissions. The American Composers Forum has started a First Nations Initiative, and some tribes have even funded education programs for young composers. The music is getting noticed both on and off the reservation by Indians who prefer country, hip-hop or heavy metal.

Mohawk cellist and composer Dawn Avery studied with John Cage and has played classical, pop music and jazz. She says she's surprised by how many people like the mix of native and classical.

"One of the reasons is that there is not only a great appreciation of the sounds of the instruments, but also an interest in hearing our traditional music represented in this way. I think people understand there is an importance to that."

But as she's become more intimate with her culture, she's also felt what she calls an emotional tug-of-war by honoring her ancestors through a culture largely responsible for their subjugation.

"It is tricky because I often wonder if I'll be able to always play cello. I've gotten farther away from typical classical music. As much as it's beautiful music, it doesn't move me the same way. It's a little bittersweet, but it's also very exciting because I have all these other sounds that vibrate in my head now that just vibrate with me better."

Back at the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian concert hall, Mescalero Apache composer and musician Steven Alvarez hopes the classical native movement will offer American Indians a new musical voice in much the same way that reggae and hip-hop have for their cultures.

"I would really like to see native America find that fusion that would create its own genre," Alvarez says. "It's reflective of who we are, not rooted in our past, but it's like who are we right now. I'm hoping maybe before I die."

Alvarez and many other American Indian composers say the new music they're creating offers a tool to dispel more than 200 years of stereotypes.

http://www.npr.org/templates/s...php?storyId=98884176

Above was about new Art, this is about Traditional Art lest we forget that both are crucial to the identity of a culture and that culture's citizens. REH


December 15, 2008, 9:47 pm NYTimes
The Potlatch Scandal: Busted for Generosity
By John Tierney


What can we learn from the potlatch ceremonies of Indians in the Pacific Northwest? In my Tuesday Findings column, I suggest some lessons for holiday shoppers, and I’d be glad to hear any more ideas from Lab readers. I argue that the potlatchers have long been ahead of the rest of society in recognizing the social utility of gift-giving — and they were certainly far ahead of the missionaries and agents of the Canadian government who tried to stop these ceremonies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Kwakwaka’wakw (here’s a rough pronunciation: QUAWK-wawk-ee-wawk) Indians are still trying to recover some of the ceremonial masks that they lost after an infamous raid in 1921 on a potlatch hosted by Chief Dan Cranmer. One of his children, Gloria Cranmer Webster, told me what happened after 45 people were arrested at the ceremony.

“They were charged with really criminal things like dancing, giving speeches and distributing gifts,” said Ms. Cranmer Webster, a former director of the U’mista Cultural Center in the family’s home town of Alert Bay, Canada, which is on an island about 180 miles northwest of Vancouver. “They were given a choice: if they gave up all their treasures, their masks and regalia, they wouldn’t have to go jail.”

Some of the Indians refused, and 20 of them were sent to prison for terms of two or three months. Other surrendered their masks and regalia, many of which ended up in museums in Canada, the United States and Britain. Eventually the museums (including the Smithsonian) returned most of the masks, which are on display at the U’mista Cultural Center. But some masks remain in the hands of private collectors and the Indians have so far been unable to persuade the Canadian government to pay for their repurchase.

“These masks are now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece,” says Bill Cranmer, another of the children of the host of the 1921 potlatch. Bill Cranmer, who’s a chief himself now (he’s quoted in my column and shown dancing in a potlatch), says it’s the duty of the Canadian government to make up for the mistakes of its agents in the 1920s.

“One of the reasons the Canadian government outlawed potlatches was based on information from missionaries that our people would be involved in debaucheries at these events and no work would get done,” Chief Cranmer says. ” But the potlatches were held in the winter time and our people used to work so hard the rest of the year to gather up gifts to give away.”

It may seem hard to believe, now that holiday gift-giving obligations have escalated into a non-Indian version of the potlatch, that people would be sent to prison for giving one another presents. Why would Christian missionaries who preach the virtue of charity want to outlaw a ceremony whose name means “to give away?” But then, I can imagine that even today there are some people who’d like to outlaw extravagance. Maybe even some Lab readers.

If you have any thoughts on the potlatch — what we can learn from its history, whether the Canadian government should pay up for those missing masks — let me know in the comments. I’m especially interested in any new ways to incorporate some of the potlatch practices into our own holiday rituals.