There are few places in the world where you can hear a violin and a cello playing alongside a Lakota drum and singers.
The Lakota Music Project will travel to South Dakota in October for its Shared Vision Tour, giving communities throughout the state the opportunity to hear exactly that.
The Lakota Music Project, an initiative of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, began as a “conviction” of Delta David Gier, the orchestra’s music director. Just six months after taking on that role in 2004, he began to consider the community that the symphony served. When he first approached Lakota musicians, he was met with skepticism.
“It was surprising, but it was my first lesson in learning how to listen,” Gier told News Watch. “Barry LeBeau, who was working with United Sioux Tribes in Pierre, said, ‘You’re crazy, but I’d like to try to help you.'”
Gier eventually began conversations with Lakota musicians throughout the state with the assistance of LeBeau. That led him to Melvin Young Bear of the New Porcupine Singers, a drumming group from the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Gier eventually began conversations with Lakota musicians throughout the state with the assistance of LeBeau. That led him to Melvin Young Bear of the New Porcupine Singers, a drumming group from the Pine Ridge Reservation.
It would take four years after that meeting for the orchestra and singers to play a single note on stage together.
“A pivotal moment occurred on a snowy evening in March in Pine Ridge. “It must have been around 2007, and it was our principal string quartet, our principal woodwind quintet, and the New Porcupine Singers,” Gier explained. “It felt really awkward, like, ‘What are we doing here?’ However, we had only recently begun to play music for one another. Then (Young Bear) stated, “Our hope is that we will pass on this tradition to the next generation.” I said, “Bingo.” “That is exactly what we do as well.”
First Lakota Music Project tour was in 2009
The Lakota Music Project has been performing new programs since its inaugural tour in 2009, which included stops on the Pine Ridge, Santee Sioux, and Rosebud reservations.
The concert format, which is divided into two parts with individual performances from each group followed by collaborative performances, has largely remained unchanged. The Creekside Singers, from the Pine Ridge reservation, now collaborate with the orchestra.
Emmanuel Black Bear, the current drummer for the Creekside Singers, has been involved with the Lakota Music Project since its inception. He told News Watch that, in addition to rehearsing and performing music, much of the group’s work focuses on building understanding.
“If we only focus on our differences, we will probably never get along. So we need to focus on our similarities and how we can make this work in a positive way,” Black Bear said. “We’ve been doing this for so long that many of us have grown close to one another. We have trust between us, so we can come together through music.”
There are significant differences between traditional Lakota music and traditional symphonic music.
Differences in the music
Lakota musicians do not typically use sheet music, whereas orchestras do. The way a piece begins varies greatly between the two groups, with orchestras always starting on the same note and Lakota singers following the drum keeper’s lead.
Gier stated that the project has been successful not only because of its national prominence (it has performed at the Museum of the American Indian in Washington and for lawmakers in Pierre), but also because it has brought together two musical communities in the state that have never interacted before.
“There have been a lot of tears during rehearsals, not from frustration, but from joy. You can see how hard we’re working to combine these two traditions to create something beautiful that people will understand and take away with a sense of possibility,” Gier explained.
This year, Derek Bermel, a composer from New York, will make his tour debut.
Bermel has collaborated on music composition with people from many different cultures, including West Africa and Belgium. His work with the Lakota Music Project marked his first experience composing music from a Native American perspective.
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“I wanted to make the Creekside Singers musicians feel at ease. Bermel told News Watch that as long as I was focused on them feeling comfortable, I expected the audience to feel the same way.
“I heard this very powerful sound and realized they were great melody writers. They were brilliant melodists, and that was the essence. They created melodies that were like iron. They were solid. They were immaculately constructed. They were unbreakable, just like a tree trunk.”
He collaborated with the Creekside Singers and the symphony to compose orchestral accompaniments and notate music that the singers donated to the project.
“You keep trying to get closer to something that’s inevitable, which is this shared space between these two cultures musically,” Bermel told me. “The most important thing was to understand the way they think about their music from a structural perspective.”
Tour aims to reach underserved communities
The program’s tour will take the music to six South Dakota locations, three of which are on reservations: Sinte Gleska University on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, Wagner Community School on the Yankton Indian Reservation, and Lakota Tech High School on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
The tour begins on October 13 at the Crazy Horse Memorial in the southern Black Hills and continues east throughout the week, concluding on October 18 at the LSS Multi-Cultural Center in Sioux Falls.
Gier stated that the concerts are free to attend in order to reach out to all members of the community.
The school performances will be especially meaningful to Black Bear, who, as drum keeper, is responsible for protecting not only the sacred drum but also the Lakota music tradition. He frequently works with youth programs to impart important cultural skills and ideals.
“When we talk about cultural preservation, we don’t mean simply recording things. The teaching is going on. “If we continue to teach, we will preserve our culture and language,” Black Bear stated.
While the tour will primarily visit Native communities throughout the state, Black Bear stated that the goal of connecting communities across cultures remains the same regardless of who is in the audience.
“If my people can see the message, we’ve done it,” Black Bear said. “If non-Native people can see the message or hear the message, we’ve also accomplished what we’re setting out to do.”
