(easy going music) - [Announcer] This is a production of South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

(bright music) (upbeat music) - Welcome to "Music Matters"!

I am your host Apolonia Davalos.

Together, we explore how and why music matters to you!

We get you out of your comfort zone with nature, survive life's trials and tribulations, transform into instruments of peace, and learn to breathe bravely.

Levitt at the Falls invites musicians who endeavor to create a better world by building community through music.

Each mission is unique as the artist themselves.

First up: Americana folk music.

"Music Matters" introduces Grammy award-winning and five time Parents' Choice Award winners, The Okee Dokee Brothers!

(upbeat music) (folk music) ♪ You've got to sing ♪ ♪ If you want a song ♪ ♪ You want a song ♪ ♪ You've got to sing ♪ - Why does music matter, Justin?

- I don't know.

Why does music matter to you?

- Let me think.

In our case, when we make family music, gives families an opportunity to have fun together and sing.

- Yeah.

And, wait, you forgot one of the most important parts.

- What else?

- Dancing.

- Dancing!

- That's what it allows us to do!

- Yeah.

- You can't really dance without music.

I mean, I guess you could.

- Silent dancing?

- Silent dancing - Try it sometimes.

- is not as fun as with music.

(folk music) ♪ We don't need a motor ♪ - [Joe] We make music to inspire people to get outdoors and that's why we took the Mississippi River trip where we got in canoes and went from Minneapolis down to St. Louis writing songs.

We went out to Appalachia, hiking through the Virginia Highlands, and wrote songs about old time music.

And then we also took an adventure album in the Rocky Mountains when we were horse packing and writing kind of country songs, or we'd just call, you know, mountain songs.

♪ A little boat built for two ♪ ♪ Can you canoe ♪ ♪ I'll be the captain and your crew ♪ These are the types of experiences that we want families to try to do on their own, too, to get creative and have fun out there.

But you don't have to go way out in nature to do that.

You can do that in your own city, in your city park.

You can do that in your backyard.

You can find a regional park, and you don't have to camp out either if that's too much.

You could just go out for a day hike and see what you can find.

(folk music) - [Justin] Our album "Winterland", we went up to Northern Minnesota and we spent some time with some dogs sledding and being out in the freezing cold Minnesota winters.

And it actually was pretty fun.

- Yeah, we were at the Boundary Waters and usually you go up to the Boundary Waters to canoe in the summer, but they also have these dog sled camps up there.

And we were near Ely, Minnesota.

We spent some time writing songs about the beauty of winter, and embracing, kind of, that darker season.

not only in nature, but in ourselves too, that we go through dark times and that's okay.

In fact, that's where we find a lot of our strength to then wait until spring to come out with some new energy and just the rhythms and seasons of life is kind of what that album was all about.

And if you're geared up properly, winter can be the best time of year in Minnesota, at least.

And maybe even South Dakota and the Midwest.

- Yeah.

- You were right.

- Yeah.

They say, "There's no bad weather, just bad clothing."

- Ahh!

- Yeah.

- That's what they say.

- Hmm.

(giggling) (folk music) We have a song that's called "Hope Machine" and the main lyric, the refrain of that song is "Keep that hope machine running strong."

And it comes from, kind of, a Woody Guthrie song.

Sort of.

What is it?

Poem.

- It's like a journal.

It's like a journal entry, he did.

- Right.

- Yeah.

- And Woody Guthrie is the guy who wrote "This Land Is Your Land".

You might know that already, but he's one of our heroes.

And that song was really based on his, sort of, belief that if we keep our hope machines running, then we're going to, we'll get through the day.

- Yeah, it's a thought that kind of revolves around his daily routines, right?

Getting up early in the morning and staying hopeful.

Put on your socks and, you know, take a shower.

Make sure you don't smell too bad.

Wear some plaid and get out there and, really, really just take the day on head first and do your best to stay positive.

♪ Running strong ♪ ♪ Got to keep that hope machine running strong ♪ - [Justin] And that was especially useful during the pandemic, which is when that song came out.

Really early during the pandemic.

And, you know, people were staying at home, I know, kind of feeling all kinds of different feelings.

And so we just said, "Keep that hope machine running strong."

(vocalizing harmoniously) (folk music) ♪ Goodbye and don't you cry ♪ ♪ I'm going to Louisiana ♪ ♪ Way haul the way ♪ ♪ Well haul away Joe ♪ ♪ To buy a dog and a muddy old hog ♪ ♪ And marry Suzy-Anna ♪ ♪ Way haul the way ♪ ♪ Well haul away Joe ♪ Sea shanties are a type of music that was created, you know, on the ships.

Sailing ships across the Atlantic or all over the world, really.

And really they're work songs.

So there'll be people kind of pulling a rope, and they decide to sing a song with that so that everybody does the work together.

- It kind of has Irish roots.

- Yeah, and sea shanties are just really fun to sing because it's all about singing together.

So that's why they've survived for so long.

♪ Way haul away ♪ ♪ Well haul away Joe ♪ (folk music) We know from experience that when you get out in Mother Nature and you are camping outside, things don't always go as planned, you know?

There's weather and sometimes that weather can be scary, or really hot.

And so really, we try to make sure to remind people that planning for being outside is really important.

And that Mother Nature can be very powerful.

And so be careful for that.

- Yeah.

Be careful and respect her.

And that whole mentality is what allows us to kind of humble ourselves, right?

As artists or human beings, just observing what's around us.

When you see the power of Mother Nature, you're reminded, you know, of course we're humans and we're special in our own right, but we're just kind of animals out here trying to survive.

♪ You want a song ♪ ♪ You've got to sing ♪ ♪ You've got to sing ♪ ♪ If you want a song ♪ ♪ You want a song ♪ ♪ You've got to sing ♪ ♪ You've got to sing ♪ (cheering) ♪ As the Northern lights come out ♪ ♪ And the prayers have been said ♪ ♪ The great Canadian Slumberjacks ♪ ♪ Starts singing 'bove your head ♪ ♪ From the waters of the Eastern Sea ♪ ♪ To the hills where the redwoods stand ♪ ♪ With an ax and with a saw ♪ ♪ Just dreaming of the northern land ♪ ♪ Singin' see what you saw and ♪ ♪ Saw what you see ♪ ♪ Saw the logs of Slumbertown ♪ ♪ Without cuttin' down a tree ♪ ♪ All you mothers rest your bones ♪ (upbeat music) - Mother Nature is powerful!

Thank you Joe and Justin for inviting us to keep our hope machines alive.

Learn more at okeedokee.org.

Up next, we become students of meaning-makers and future-makers dedicated to being a source of goodness.

"Music Matters" is honored to listen and learn from hip hop music duo Aja Black and Big Samir, who are The Reminders!

(upbeat music) - [Aja] I create because I've never known anything else.

Creativity is like breathing to me.

It's something I'm always doing.

It's not something I consciously think about before I engage with it, but it's allowed me the space to take all of my life experiences, all of my relationships, all of my ideas and thoughts, and translate them.

I think when I'm creating, it's allowing me to take my perspective and communicate it to the world and be validated.

It proves that I exist.

So when I'm creating, I'm breathing, I'm living in the fullest of my being that way.

- Yes.

Documenting my journey and my experience through this world is something that was never taught.

Something that just came about like magic.

You know, I become a magician in that way.

♪ 'Cause we going to bury all of that right here ♪ - The process of creating in life are all kind of one and the same since I was a child.

So, like, if we're in the car we could, I could just be staring out the window and we're on a long road trip somewhere.

And I'll look at all the lines on the road.

And then for some reason, in my brain, it'll be like, ♪ The lines in the road ♪ ♪ They show you where to go ♪ ♪ Never know where you end up ♪ ♪ But the lines in the road ♪ ♪ We already know ♪ ♪ They'll take us to a place where we'll love ♪ I just made that up but, in my mind, there's no separation between creating something and living something or participating in something.

My brain is hardwired to consistently be creating because that's how I translate and understand my sensory experiences.

What's going on around me is I get information, my brain turns it into music, and then I can translate it and communicate it.

- And you have to be able to block off all distractions when that happens.

Like, just stay focused on that.

♪ Oh ♪ (vocalizing melodically) The way we produce music individually and as a group, you know, that's how we started out.

It was individual artists.

And then we came together.

- And then sometimes we'll just, we do a lot of freestyling because when you're married, you can just like create any time.

Even if the other person doesn't feel like it because it's six in the morning.

And it's just like, you know, getting the kids ready for school.

(hip hop music) When we're going into communities, what we do is present the history of not just our style of music, but the history of ourselves and the history of ourselves in context of different communities.

So one thing that we do when we are talking about music is how integrally music is linked to survival.

So at the beginning of time, when people were all in caves, the way that music came about is people were recognizing and assessing threats in their environment and trying to find ways to remember them and to pass them down to their children beyond just the story.

So what they would do is create a song around it so that you had pneumonic memories.

It's easy to remember and then you can teach the song to children and it's easy for them to remember.

And then you can create culture and dance rituals and visual art all around the music.

So the first thing that we start with is the origin of music itself, and then how music reached each of us, and the type of music that reached us and then how that musical story became our musical story.

And then we ask people how music has become their musical story.

- [Big Samir] And I think us being parents as well, we're around children, we're raising children, but then we're also around our kids' classmates and then our nieces and nephews, so we're used to engaging with students and children.

And, you know, it was a natural progression from being performers to educating.

- We always operate under the assumption that they're just smarter than us, because if you could try to communicate something that, "No, no, that's not how it went.

That's not it."

They'll tell you right away.

And they'll give you an insight into their understanding.

A lot of times with hip hop music in particular, people always are wondering why their children gravitate to this music so much, but it's a style and genre of music where if you want to know what's going on with your children and the things that they're facing and battling and being exposed to, they're telling 100% of the truth inside of that music, even when it's not pretty or desirable.

It's honest communication, for sure.

(hip hop music) I think in the vein of poetry and music and ethnomusicology, for me, it's more been about meaning-making because we call ourselves The Meaning Makers all the time, but we use a tremendous amount of figurative language and metaphor, just trying to make sense of what's going on.

And we learned through ethnomusicology, in particular, that there's only so many stories, but there's millions of eyes on the same story.

What we're trying to do is get to the heart of what that story means to you.

(hip hop music) - We grow with every city we go to, you know.

This is our first time in Sioux Falls, but I'm sure this place is, we're going to remember this place forever.

And especially during this time that we spent, we spent at home for a year, we've learned, we almost relearned how to be musicians at home that are not touring all the time.

So, we've definitely grown in our artistry from being at home, and grown in our performance ability from being on the road.

- Yeah, and one thing that's interesting to know about our music as a duo and incorporating our family, we have three children, if anybody that wasn't aware of that.

But what's been interesting is that 50% of what we did at the beginning was intentional.

And 50% of it was accidental.

- Yeah.

- It just evolved kind of on its own.

The intention that we put into it was to bring goodness to wherever we went and to be a source of goodness for anybody that was seeing us.

And all of that was intentional.

The accidental part was the fact that we didn't have control over... - What fruit we was going to bear.

- At first, when the children were young, we brought them because we didn't have any other choice.

- Right.

- So they were just with us and that turned out to be one of the most incredibly beautiful experiences of our life.

Being able to share our dream and our journey and our growth with our children and being able to watch their dreams grow at the same time.

- [Big Samir] Yeah, it's one of those things where now it's the cool thing to be a married couple and be entertainers, and to have your children on the pictures, like, that's something that we've always done, you know.

Our eldest daughter's 15.

So that's something that we've done for the past 15 years.

- But we didn't do it as a flex.

We did it because we did not have a babysitter at the beginning.

- It was never a flex.

- And that's just the way that was going to go.

- Yeah.

(laughing) - Like, "Okay, let's just bring them.

(Aja laughing) We're performing at the park," you know?

- Exactly.

That's why we did mostly park shows - Yeah.

- back then.

♪ Get up get up get up get up ♪ ♪ We're unstoppable ♪ (upbeat music) - Hip hop is honest communication.

Thank you Aja Black and Big Samir for reminding us that music is survival.

Check them out at theremindersmusic.com.

Get ready!

Today, we are language learners as we sing and dance with Colombian composers Uno Dos Tres Andres.

Recipients of the Latin Grammy for "Best Children's Album", "Music Matters" celebrates multiculturalism with husband-wife duo on Andres and Christina of Uno Dos Tres Andres!

(upbeat music) - Music matters to us because it creates community.

- [Andres] Music is the perfect vehicle to teach languages.

And really it's from the time we're babies, our brain is trying to decipher and capture all of the sounds around us to build the knowledge of language, which is so important, of course.

So, and the other thing is that language doesn't live in a vacuum, right?

Language is a product of a culture, of a people, of a country.

So the best way to learn it is to connect it to those songs.

To those songs that not only you're learning the grammar and the words, but you're learning what it represents to the community, like you were mentioning, Christina.

So, that's why we invite you.

If you are learning a second language, sing with it and sing with us!

- Our expertise is in Spanish.

We're fluent, native, bilingual Spanish speakers, but our real goal is to have children be curious about all kinds of languages.

And we are learning ASL!

So for example, our song, ♪ Hola amigo ♪ ♪ Como te llamas ♪ ♪ Hola amigo ♪ ♪ Canta conmigo ♪ It's the sign for music, for name.

"What is your name?"

So we love using sign language.

First of all, because it talks about accessibility and how important it is to know at least a few words, a few signs in a language to be able to communicate with someone when they need it the most.

And just for curiosity!

How beautiful is it to learn things in a new language.

And lastly, because children love doing things with their hands.

It helps channel the energy and challenge them as well to learn new signs.

♪ Idioma ♪ ♪ Desde que seas buena persona ♪ (lively Latin music) - An instrument connects to people, to stories, to people's feelings.

And it's so deep, for example, el cuatro.

The cuatro.

That's why it's number four, because it has four strings.

The cuatro is the national instrument of Venezuela.

One of the national treasures of Venezuela, but also of Colombia.

And now with everything that is happening between Colombia and Venezuela, that has been happening with so many (indistinct), so many connections, people are coming back and forth.

This music has to unite us and we need to gather around a cuatro and sing beautiful melodies of the plains.

It's really music of cowboys, of the cowboys of the plains of South America.

(lively Latin music) - We are so proud that not only have we released albums, but now some of our songs are turning into books.

And this is our first book, "Hello, Friend/Hola, Amigo".

Should we sing a little bit of it, Andres?

(Andres speaking Spanish) - "Hola, Amigo" aqui.

- And they were published by Scholastic.

We were so proud that Sara Palacios did the illustrations.

Are you ready?

(Andres speaking Spanish) ♪ It doesn't matter where you are from ♪ ♪ If you speak English or Espanol ♪ ♪ It doesn't matter ♪ ♪ There's nothing wrong ♪ ♪ We can all get along ♪ - And we say, ♪ Hola amigo ♪ ♪ Hola amigo ♪ ♪ Como te llamas ♪ ♪ Como te llamas ♪ ♪ Hola amigo ♪ ♪ Hola amigo ♪ ♪ Canta conmigo ♪ ♪ Canta conmigo ♪ - So this song and story is about making friends across cultures, across languages, about our love of languages, and it celebrates multiculturalism because that's the world that we live in today.

♪ Salta ♪ ♪ Salta ♪ ♪ Uno dos tres ♪ ♪ Salta ♪ Then we had our song, "Diez Pajaritos", "10 Little Birds", turn into a book.

And our latest book is about our song, "Mi Comunidad".

Are you ready, Andres?

- [Andres] "Mi Comunidad"?

(strumming guitar) ♪ Mi comunidad ♪ ♪ Mi comunidad ♪ (singing in Spanish) ♪ My community ♪ ♪ My community ♪ ♪ Has lots of special people ♪ ♪ Helping you and me ♪ - And this song sings about all of the people who are the essential workers, the community helpers, the people who make our communities and our lives go.

People in healthcare, educators, and people you may not immediately think of, like farm workers, interpreters, all of the people in our community and all of the roles we play to help each other.

(lively Latin music) We are launching The Activate Scholarship.

We're partnering with a foundation in Colombia, and one student is going to get their own instrument and a year of music lessons.

Cakike is a foundation in Bogota and Cartagena that works with children from underprivileged neighborhoods in those cities and gives them music classes.

And through music, an opportunity for a different life, for a different path.

And we are so, so excited to support the work of this foundation and another foundation in Venezuela that provides music experiences to children with special needs like autism and vision impairment.

So, through music we're supporting these causes.

We're so excited about the special guests we have on the album like Gilberto Santa Rosa, and we're excited about you listening and tuning in and moving and activating your heart, your bodies and your whole family.

(upbeat music) - Music is what unites us.

Activate your lives and visit 123andres.com.

There is beauty in every breath.

Ashley Ballou-Bonnema is the founder and executive director of Breathe Bravely, an organization which empowers individuals with cystic fibrosis to discover the life-giving power of singing.

Let's find your song.

(upbeat music) - [Ashley] The sINgSPIRE virtual choir is unique because it's made up of individuals from all over the world living with cystic fibrosis.

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease that impacts the lungs and pancreas and multiple other organs.

Our body creates too much mucus, therefore leading into complications that create devastating effects to our lungs, leading to respiratory failure, making each breath more and more difficult.

sINgSPIRE is a program and a choir that empowers individuals with cystic fibrosis to not only find the beauty within every single breath, but to use it to share their voice.

(choir singing harmoniously) In the United States, affects 30,000 individuals and worldwide 70,000 individuals.

And two people with cystic fibrosis are not supposed to share the same space.

So we've all been living in this kind of COVID realm for the last, you know, 16 months or so, and people with cystic fibrosis live that every day.

Individuals with cystic fibrosis harbor bacteria within their lungs.

That is not a problem to the general population, but if two people with cystic fibrosis share the same space, it's very similar to, like, spreading COVID.

So, the six-foot rule that everybody has lived by for the last year or so is something that the CF community lives by every single day.

And so I might be harboring a bug within my lungs, that if I cough on my hand and I touch something, or I cough into the air, again, aerosolization, that somebody else with CF might have never been introduced to before or their body's not able to handle that bacteria or virus or fungus, and so it can be deadly to them.

For so many years I hid the fact that I had cystic fibrosis.

Because I'm a musician, I didn't want those problems to intersect.

I didn't want my peers, my colleagues to know that I couldn't breathe as well as them.

So at the end of my graduate schooling, after many difficulties with cystic fibrosis and the fact that it was becoming more and more difficult for me to outrun, I took that stage for the last time for my graduate recital and knew, in so many respects, how my path had led to that very moment.

And just how singing had saved my own life.

And that is sINgSPIRE: sharing the power of singing, the life-giving power of singing with other individuals who may think it's impossible.

(harmonious singing) We write all of our own music and it has, you know, a connection that is so much deeper that the greater world might not be able to, you know, exactly put their finger on it and connect directly to it, but we try and write it in a way that the choir itself connects on a deeper level, while still creating that connection and that empathy outside of that with our community.

I think everybody in their life at some point has struggled to take that breath, has felt breathless, has felt defeated by their own body and their life circumstances.

So it's a way to connect our choir at a deeper level, while still connecting to our greater community.

(soft, harmonious singing) One song that I always go back to in my own life that has had such profound meaning and will always have just a hold on my sense as a musician and where I look ahead and those days that I still question, "What am I doing?"

and "Am I a musician?"

"Am I good enough?"

"Do I have a voice that's needed or worthy to be shared?"

And that is a folk song/hymn that is called, "How Can I Keep From Singing?"

And in my darkest times, and the days that I questioned what I was doing and trying to live those separate lives of being a musician and being an individual with cystic fibrosis, I can tell you my life always came back to that simple song.

That, "My life flows on an endless song above Earth's limitations.

I hear the real, though far-off song that hails a new creation."

And that still just gives me chills in my body.

Thinking that every single one of us, no matter what we're going through, no matter what life has given us, we all feel sadness.

We all feel joy.

We all feel pain.

We all feel that excitement.

We just call it something different.

And if we just go back to the idea of the reverberations within our soul of, "How can we not be grateful?"

"How can we not be joyful?"

"How can we not live this best life?"

Literally finding the beauty within every breath.

How can we keep from singing?

(choir singing melodically) (soft piano music) (soft piano music) (upbeat music) - We are called to joy and to live our best life.

You, music lovers, have a voice that is worthy to be shared.

Thank you, Ashley, for reviving within us that we all have a song to sing.

Stay connected through breathebravely.org.

Thank you for watching "Music Matters"!

I am your host Apolonia Davalos.

See you on our next journey through music!

I love you!

Muah!

(upbeat music)