- [Narrator] This is a production of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

(lively music) (no audio) (no audio) (no audio) (no audio) (no audio) (lively music) - We began our Lakota Music Project.

2009 was the first tour.

(audience clapping) And we've built upon it since then.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (audience clapping) An outgrowth of the Lakota Music Project was the Composition Academies.

It began with a composer in residence that we had, Jerod Impichchachaaha' Tate, and he's a Chickasaw from Oklahoma, but he had done these kinds of composition academies for native kids in the Southwest before.

So one of the things that he brought to us as composer in residence was to develop the same kind of program with us.

- You know, we have all these little pieces.

- Our composition faculty, three composers, Theodore Wiprud, Jeffrey Paul, and Michael Begay are really masterful in taking each student exactly where they are musically and to be able to coach them throughout the week.

- Since the summer of 2018, I've worked with Jeff and Mike here in the Music Composition Academy, both on the Sisseton-Wahpeton Reservation and at Black Hills State University, where we serve students coming from reservations in the western part of the state as well as from Rapid City.

- Provide opportunity for students, for students in rural areas who may not have access to music education.

I think it's important that at the Music Composition Academy, we have diverse students from different backgrounds, different abilities.

They all grow from interaction with each other.

- I think one of the good aspects too is that I'm also a Native American composer, right?

And they see that, and that I was in their shoes as well.

So, and I got to where I'm at.

And they see that it's possible and they can do it too.

- We often end up having more students than we say we are going to accept, because we want as many people to participate as want to participate.

- There is like an interview process, and Ted is sort of like our lead composer for the project, and he'll usually interview the students beforehand.

- He kind of sifts through applications, makes a lot of phone calls upfront, and he talks to each of the students, and when possible, their parents or families.

- New applicants, I interview by telephone.

I want to know something about their musical background.

I wanna tell them about the camp and make sure they feel like it's a good fit for themselves.

Do they really wanna spend a week of their summer doing this?

Does it sound like the coolest thing they've ever heard of?

You know, to have professional musicians playing something that they made up.

- The first year, it was like scary because I didn't really know anyone.

And it was just like, my band teacher was like, "Hey, I have this new program you might like, just fill out this paperwork and give it to me by Monday."

Got an email saying I got in.

Couldn't believe it.

I've been attending South Dakota Symphony Orchestra's Music Composition Academy for four years now.

- Students come in with a baseline knowledge of music, and it's kind of all over the map in terms of their skill level, their familiarity, whether they read music or don't.

- Some students have a musical background, you know, like they have had lessons and stuff, and some students have not, you know?

And we even had some students that don't even play an instrument or anything, but they have ideas and they have, you know, sounds and they have a, you know, you can just like not even know anything about music and just kind of make something, you know?

Just starts with one note.

(students clapping) - We spend a lot of time at Music Composition Academy together, creating things together, feeling comfortable, just coming up with ideas.

You'll see us getting in a circle and playing a game where we turn our name into a brief composition, right?

I just say my name in a musical way and everybody else learns to do it.

- They compose their name.

So we kind of had a game where you, like, mine is like playing guitar, Wiggy one Mike.

Wiggy one Mike.

- Wiggy one Mike - [All] Tobi, Seth, Sam, Ireline, Jeff.

- Everybody has a unique presentation of their name.

And then we would, we say that's your first composition for the week.

- The kinds of circle games that give kids permission to be creative and not to fear that they're gonna be shut down by their colleagues.

No wrong answers, no bad ideas.

We really established that very strongly on day one.

- At first, we mostly just started with getting to know each other and working on a little bit of short term, like five minute exercises on like composing really short music with another person.

- We start out just based off like getting inspiration, try to find some sort of rhythm that you like and teaching us how to build that start of the music.

- We also encourage students to bring their own instruments.

Most students play instrument of some kind.

You'll find knots of guitar players, you know, impressing each other with riffs and with things that they've learned from different recordings.

A lot of electric guitars going on here in Sisseton this week, but we also have kids playing wind instruments and bringing those, and this way they can demonstrate things for each other as well.

- I compose on my own keyboard that I was given for a birthday present after my first year.

- [Jeffrey] If a student doesn't have a particular instrument to bring or doesn't have access to one, then usually there will be electric keyboards and things of that nature available for them to use.

- So the kids start to develop relationships with each other and with the teachers.

- As we get into the middle of the week, we're doing workshops that generate rhythmic material, that generate melodic material, that give us ways of thinking about harmony and about how different instruments can fit together in a chamber group.

So we're gonna take about 45 minutes to hear what the, you know, just hear Thomas play, right?

Let's just hear what the cello sounds like.

- Can you guys sing the low note?

- Probably not.

- Okay.

Or sing in your voice.

Okay, it's this note.

For the first, I think it's four measures or two measures.

Every time you hear this note, that's the low part of the valley, right?

So let's track this voice.

Okay, so I want you to sing ♪ Duh, duh ♪ We have it right, here we go.

And.

(lively music) (lively music continues) So you can do double stops on the cello.

Play two- - But it's also giving them ideas that they hear that they can then use.

- We will have a lot of listening sessions where we'll listen to classical music or just off the wall sounds or anything you can possibly think of.

And we'll talk about harmony or melody.

And we kind of have fun little games that we do to kind of establish different sound patterns, just to kind of like tune your ears in to listening in a different way than maybe you do on a daily basis.

- Right?

But the way those, in each of those cases, they're just three different pitches, but they create a color, right?

They create a feeling, they create something that's very hard to describe.

You know, color and feeling are just like analogies, right?

So we alternate between doing these group workshops that generate material and give people permission to be creative.

With individual time working with Mike or Jeff or me, to notate kids' ideas to be their scribe and their coach.

Helping them develop their ideas and bringing to it our professional knowledge of how you put things down on paper for professional musicians.

- And what I really like is that they get to see a different process from the three different composers.

So everybody works differently and they see that - They help a lot, they really do.

I mean, I don't even know how to make sheet music.

So they put what's in your brain onto paper, really.

That's a lot of what they do.

And they help you transition parts better.

Like you can have really messy, just chopped up bits and then they help you make it nice and smooth.

- I just like wrote down something.

I'm not very good at writing down staff music or whatever, but then Mike came along and he helped me, and I just told him some notes to do, like, to know what to put on there.

And it sounded pretty cool.

I kinda got inspiration from actually going out on the Prairie.

- I know Mike helped me connect my pieces.

I felt so much like excitement when he did.

It was an amazing feeling.

They're so helpful and I've learned so much from them.

And they're amazing players.

- They're actually pretty fun.

There's like a lot of laughing, a lot of hangout time.

- The other important tool, of course, is our computers, right?

Is that we use notation software, Mike and Jeff and I, to capture kids' ideas and to efficiently generate performance materials.

- It gets down to the nitty gritty of coaching out of each and every student a piece of music that expresses what they want to express.

- A fishing trip.

- Relationships.

- I'm going for a marching kind of feeling.

- I hope to convey change.

- Something you could put in a horror movie like a chase scene, and something to get your blood flowing and stuff.

- It kind of resembles the wind, my piece.

- Something's not like how it seems or what it seems.

- You have a story and it's like, you need to tell that story because there's other kids like you who probably don't know how to speak about how they're feeling.

- We don't go, "This is how it's supposed to be.

This is how music is, this is how you know it's supposed to be."

'Cause it can be any way.

- This is not a place for learning theory.

This is not a place where we're teaching composition.

It's a place where kids are hearing musical sounds and making art out of those sounds.

- [Michael] Just keep it creative and using the tools to build different worlds for them.

You know, they build their own world, musically speaking of course.

- Later on Wednesday and definitely on Thursday we are just pedal to the metal composing with the kids.

By this time, they're just full of ideas.

They're so eager to get it out.

Mike and Jeff and I go around and work each of us with several of the students getting their ideas down on paper and then into the notation software, helping them figure out how to use all the voices.

But throughout this process, every note is decided by the students.

- The composition teachers don't write a single note.

Every single note of music comes out of the kids.

- So all of the music is very much their own and we just sort of like, you know, help them write it down.

- Ted and Mike and I, we each bring laptops with either Finale or Sibelius, some kind of music notation software.

Our Thursday nights at the camps are usually like all-nighters because we are fiendishly inputting, and inputting, and inputting all of the prolific students works that have happened during the course of the week and trying to sift through our notes.

We've probably been scratching things down on manuscript paper and things like that.

- You start out not really knowing what you're gonna do.

I mean, sometimes you can go in with an idea, but you really have no idea how it's gonna come out.

By Tuesday, you're kind of freaking out 'cause you're like, "This is not gonna become a piece by the end of the week."

And then Wednesday you're like, "Oh yeah, okay, I can see this."

And Friday you got your own little, you know, just little music, you know?

- By Friday morning, kids are finishing their pieces and by Friday midday we're listening to the pieces together, not with a professional performance, but through the wonders of technology.

Our notation software can play back through MIDI, a fairly good rendition of what the kids have written.

(lively music) - Hearing your friends' pieces coming together and like hearing them and like everyone just being excited about making their own thing, and everyone just doing it together, you know?

(lively music) (students clapping) - And by then they're all cheering for each other because they've watched these pieces develop over the course of the week.

And somehow there's something about sharing fresh musical ideas.

It just makes everybody each other's fans, you know?

There's never any sense of, you know, somebody being better than anybody else.

Even though naturally there's a difference in musical background among the students, but everybody is so supportive of each other's final products.

It's a big party when we play these things for each other on Friday afternoon.

(no audio) (no audio) (lively music) (lively music continues) (lively music continues) (students clapping) - That was beautiful, thank you.

- There's nothing quite like the look on the face of a student composer at the first rehearsal of their piece.

When they hear live musicians creating that human warm sound that expresses the ideas that that kid got down on paper.

It's one thing to hear it on the computer, but when they hear the live musicians play it for the first time, I can't describe the light that goes on on their face, the way their jaw drops, and they realize this is me through them, this miracle of live performance.

- Will come in.

They have the staccato.

Do you want us to really exaggerate the difference and be extra legato before that?

- Yeah.

- The next thing is when the musicians then finish their performance, the kid is breathless.

The musicians ask, "So what about bar four?

Did you want that more detached or more slurred?"

And the young composer realizes that they're the boss.

It's like the grownups are turning to them for advice.

They're the leaders, they're the future, they're the ones we wanna hear from.

- I wanted to add on a piece to the end, and they just like, they knew instantly what to do.

It was amazing.

And they just executed everything so perfectly.

It's like right what I was thinking, it was like right in front of me.

It was really nice to hear it on recording, of course, but it's just so much more immersive, like when you're right there and you can really feel like the weight of the piece.

- It's not like a one way glass where they can just, they're just observers, you know?

They're engaging with the performer.

- Students are learning from this experience that they have something important to say and that it matters that other people listen to it and other people want to hear what they have to say.

(no audio) (no audio) (lively music) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (lively music) (lively music continues) (gentle music) (gentle music continues) (lively music) (lively music continues) (audience cheering) (audience clapping) (audience clapping continues) - I mean, yeah, the music is important and it's very important to allow them to express themselves this way.

But I think we're looking to give them validation as human beings to celebrate who they are individually, to give them the attention that they're deserving of.

- I think it's giving them a voice is what's really important, especially, you know, as a young person, it's good to be heard and to express yourself, like I said, in a very healthy way.

- Encouraging students' personal growth through creative opportunities is something very powerful for individual students and for our society.

To promote individual creativity as a value that can go into any area of life or occupation is essential to the development of young lives.

- Never be afraid of your ideas.

- I say, just like have fun and make something that you wanna make.

Like something that you're proud of.

- How to be comfortable, like making mistakes.

I think that's one of the biggest things I've learned is that there are no mistakes in there, which is really nice.

And to be accepting for yourself because there's no way to grow if you don't, you know, learn from what you've done.

- When I listen to a song now, I can hear when something repeats or I can hear when there's a new piece or a high note and something like, it's really teaches you how to listen to music.

Because before it was just, "Oh yeah, it goes high, goes low."

(laughs) I think that's really what I learned the most.

- People actually enjoy the song and it's like, "Hmm, maybe I should be a little more proud of myself for it, because it's not every day a little 16-year-old gets to be on stage talking about their piece."

- I hope they find constructive ways to express themselves.

Music is such a wonderful and healthy way to do that.

For many of the students, I have hopes that they will kind of embrace a new kind of holding themselves to a new standard and have some, a new maybe sense of pride in their individuality and who they are, and what they might be able to offer to the world.

- And it speaks to the limitless possibility of the adolescent mind, right?

As it's just coming into fruition that they can do anything.

You just have to make sure they feel permission to do those things and give them the support.

Take away the technical barriers of notation, technical talk about music.

No, just let them express what they want to express, help them find their way to the fullest expression, and take care of all the technicality so that we can get a good performance of what they really want to hear.

- We're trying to champion young people's voices, hands down.

That's what we're trying to do.

We're not trying to make classical musicians or composers out of these students, but we are trying to champion voices and show the rest of the state, the rest of the world, even, that students have a lot to say and it's really important, and we should listen.

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