This is a production of South Dakota Public Broadcasting in October of 2021 as part of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra centennial season a performance of what is known as the Lakota Music Project was given at the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, performing with the orchestra were the Lakota Drumming Group, The Creekside Singers and also Dakota cedar flute player Bryan Akipa.

This unique concert showcased how music serves as a bridge for cultural understanding.

It was the results of a collaboration that has been years in the making.

My name is Christopher Hill and I've been principal clarinetist of the South Dakota Symphony since 1987.

But one of the things I always thought was really impressive about this job about South Dakota Symphony is that we've been going out to the reservation since pretty much my first year and I know before I even joined.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

We're the Dakota Wind Quintet and we're very happy to be here today.

During those early years, musical connections and friendships developed in the mid two thousands.

The Lakota Music Project was conceived.

Think about 4 hours we spent together at the Boys and Girls Club in Pine Ridge.

We had the New Porcupine Singers, of which you were a member.

we had our principal woodwind quintet, of which Jeff is a member.

We had our principal string quartet.

And I remember everybody had kind of it felt a little awkward, like, what are we doing here?

And so we just started playing music for each other.

And out of that, a rather organic conversation began to develop.

Yeah, it was, you know, it was the first time, actually, that was the first time I ever like, really heard symphony orchestra music.

So it was really intriguing.

From the beginning, the Lakota music project was created to build a bridge between cultures and to foster understanding through music and exchanging ideas.

A big part of this was being educated about each other's culture and music.

Some key people were enlisted to help with this education.

Melvin Young Bear being the keeper of the Drum, and Ronnie Tice, who was at that point, head of the humanities at Black Hills State University.

Yeah.

And written a lot about the Lakota music and culture.

And so and Barry LeBeau, who was with United Through Tribes.

I mean, these are these were our this was our team, right?

Yeah.

So, you know, everybody was trying to facilitate the discussion.

I think the idea was intriguing to me.

I come from the theater world.

So when David was first articulating his idea for this project, I thought that man's crazy, but I think this thing will work.

It's a doable kind of thing, and I think I can help him.

I, I don't know if I envision being with him for the whole, for the whole ride, but what my role just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

And so we have to go visit this person.

We have to.

I have to introduce him to these people.

I have to.

We need to get permission from these people.

We need the blessings of these people.

We need we need a lot of help for this.

And I think David needed me for that.

And I and I just happened to know the people that that were of great help to the project.

Ronnie Tyson's name came to mind immediately.

I knew that we had to have him as a cultural resource.

I haven't seen because of his outstanding educational background, He teaches Lakota studies and his music musicological background.

He has written books on Lakota music and number of the third.

The third great reason is that he is one of the mentors of the New Porcupine Singers that the drum group we're using.

He is an original member of the Porcupine Singer.

The point here today is to become a little more familiar with Indian music, primarily Lakota music, so that we can get some ideas about how on a performance level we can.

Then bring the two together.

So what I'd like to do is begin with the instruments.

The kind of beat you can dance to.

So when something that you standing at a powwow they'll be going.

Don't, don't, don't dum Today, about.

The only occasion you will see one of these is during ceremonies Strange noise.

Isn't that the same sound.

Hearing your explanations for your songs and where they're coming from.

And different things like that.

And then, you know, Malvern and Ronnie Sharing In our history it was it was I it was a good moment.

I just think that, you know, one day we're going to put something together that was that thought that, you know, we had this one day we're going to put some kind of music together.

I don't know how it's going to look or sound, but I knew it was something we we were talking about for later on.

So it was kind of it was kind of exciting to be able to start that.

And here we are, you know, all these years later.

After learning about each other's culture and music, the real collaborating could begin.

This required communicating, compromising and being willing to help each other.

One of my mentors said, Good music making is about friendship.

And, you know, just you do what is necessary to help the other person.

And thank goodness for me, Bryan Akipa it is willing to help me out if I have an issue or bull or anybody will help me out if they ever have an issue.

You know, coming in at a certain point or something like that.

I'll do what I can to help them.

But, you know, I think honestly, they helped me more than I ever I've ever helped them.

Maybe the second or third flute I ever made.

It was a five hole flute.

And then you asked me to if I could make a flute in a flat minor or major if I made a flat major.

And so I kind of had to figure out, well, what what is that.

So once I started, you know, figuring out I had a chromatic tuner and I put that flute on there, and it most of the notes were pretty close, and it just needed one more note.

And I debated if I should put or cause a hole in there because it's a five hole flute.

And I had it maybe 40 years or more.

So I just went ahead and I thought, well, I put this flute away a long time ago.

It's been doing nothing all these years.

If I put that hole in there, it's I'm going to start using this flute again.

So that's what I did.

The music composition.

Victory Songs is a set of songs written for baritone and orchestra in the Lakota language.

Singer Stephen Bryant had some particular challenges to overcome.

So I received the.

Score.

And and then I received a a a tape and MP three from Barry.

LeBeau With specifically just the pronunciation.

And, you know, being a singer, having studied three or four languages and we've worked phonetically a lot.

And this there was a.

Quite a phonetic, you know, iteration in the score.

And then with the help of his his pronunciation guide, I went through it and I went through it with him.

And, you know, he would correct me and we.

Would.

Eventually got on a page that he thought.

Was reasonable.

One of the things that is more difficult for me personally is sometimes the native musicians will deliberately, you know, move to different pitch areas.

It's part of their tradition.

That's what they do.

And it can be difficult for an instrument like the bassoon because we don't have any tuning slides.

It sort of is what it is.

And matching the pitches can be sort of difficult sometimes because they're moving to a different place.

That's their instinct as performers and that's their tradition.

It's very much not ours.

We play the air here.

We're going to stay.

You know, honestly, it was scary the rhythms in Black Hills Olowan are incredibly difficult.

And I remember talking with one of the guys, I think it was bull, but it might have been somebody else who Emmanuel Black Bear who was saying that he was intimidated having to do something unnatural for them, which was come in at a certain pitch.

And he was stunned to find out that we were scared to have to play.

What to them was a very easy rhythm for us.

You know, took you know, years for us to be able to really feel it.

For us as musicians and for the music that was on the page.

We had the pitch staying the same throughout the arrangement.

So we were faced with a debate of whether we should try to drop our pitch to match him as he went through.

Just what was the best way to do something with this song that really felt like we were in a collaboration rather than trying to make his way of singing fit in with our Western classical training And I started to sort of just hint at the pitches before he came in at the top of each verse.

And then as soon as the music started you know, and the song starts going, then my emotional kicks in, you know.

And so I was kind of like an and confused stage at times.

So having Robbie there beside me and actually singing was really, really helpful in that.

And I was really thankful to the other musicians because they adjusted to me too.

And that was really so it wasn't just a one sided thing.

I'm not just trying to fit in here.

You know, they're doing the same, you know, we're trying to pieces together and as a really good it was really good.

It's possible to be very different and to coexist at the same time.

You know, of course, there's when you're coming up with a concert, you both both parties have to decide, am I going to go this way a little more?

Should they come this way a little bit more?

And I think that's a great metaphor for life, for addressing racial prejudice and finding common ground.

Both Native and non-native composers have contributed compositions to the Lakota Music Project.

One of these composers is the South Dakota Symphony Orchestras principal oboist Jeffrey Paul.

We've been doing one of the movements of the concerto that you wrote for Brian "Wind on Clear Lake."

We've been doing it quite a bit.

And it's another another example of of the melding of the two worlds and the flexibility that's required is some of that flexibility.

Jeff, you wrote in to the piece.

Right.

So and the others of it, it was just, you know, we're just stretching and pulling and things as we go tempo wise to fit with what Brian's doing.

And so what was what was the process like of, you know, conceiving this piece?

You were in a cabin on on Clear Lake and Sisseton and.

Yeah, that was kind of the the inception where the material was kind of born for the piece.

You know, I was staying on on the cabin in Clear Lake and Bryan and I had just really met for the first time at the Enemy Swim Powwow, I believe it was.

And we were just kind of getting to know each other.

And I just he's telling me how he makes his flutes and, and why two flutes that might be in very similar keys are very different and have very specific purposes for certain songs.

And why those not they're not interchangeable.

So I'm, I'm trying to like filter and absorb all of this information.

And and I was up real late that night just with the wheels turning going, what the heck am I going to do to try and bring our two traditions together in in as authentic and sincere and respectful manner as possible?

I just heard the wind howling through the cottonwood trees that were right there by the cabin and my ear was picking out a very clear kind of pentatonic pattern and and and it kind of clicked, you know, I mean, you had given me a little bit of history of the flute and the pentatonic scale and how it was the folk folklore is it's from a tree branch.

Right.

And and I went, you know what?

I'm just going to start transcribing what I hear in, in nature, in the wind.

And it turned into it turned into a melody.

And the way I, I decided to kind of it's an ever changing process.

The piece is still evolving and mutating, but but arrange it for the winds and string players.

And with Bryan on the cedar flute it was really important to me that I was not going to simply write a piece that my colleagues could play by just reading the music and then throw Brian into the mix.

Not knowing how Western classical Western European classical music really works I wanted to make my colleagues equally as uncomfortable in their it sounds humorous, but.

But the point, of course, is very sincere, right?

It wouldn't be fair to just throw you into our fire, right?

I think it's a much better idea to throw us into your fire, so to speak.

Right?

And and and together we're creating something that's just a little bit more authentic and honest.

And so, yeah, I definitely built in some flexibility in the piece where we just really have to listen to Brian and we have to adapt our textures and the sounds that we make to what he's doing The success of the Lakota Music Project led to the development of the music composition academies.

The Academies are tuition free week long intensive composition summer camps serving primarily Native American middle and high school students.

The students work with a team of three composers Theodore Wiprud, Jeffrey Paul and Michael Begay to create their own unique compositions.

Each student in the Lakota Dakota Composition Academy will spend a week in the summer, and they'll come out at the end of the week with a piece that they've composed for either string quartet or woodwind quintet.

It's basic knowledge of music.

These are not composers that come in, but they come out composers in a week.

It's remarkable.

We've done this four years now and we've got over 50 compositions of kids, you know, now, and we're playing them regularly with Lakota Music Project.

It's astonishing this one was my description of almost like a teenager's feelings of going through like anger and sadness, frustration and confusion.

And then always at the end there is hope.

And so the figurativeness of this is that our life is almost like this little boat on these big waves of emotions that we feel and we don't know what we're doing, but in the end we figure it out.

My piece is called Wounded Survivors.

It's about the boarding schools and the the kids who had to go to the boarding school.

I wanted to write a piece about this because most natives around here or the trauma that we go through now stems from the boarding schools because of the trauma our elders went through that my grandparents and my great grandparents and everybody else is on the reservation.

So to go through the boarding schools, it kind of really messed up since I had a go there for years and during the childhood years and their trials years, that's the most important time when your brain develops.

So that's going to go through their whole life.

Witnessing the beginnings of the Lakota Music Project is a little like witnessing the making and the birth of a child.

Something out of nothing.

That was that was really the most amazing thing because there was never anything like that before.

Like Lakota Music Project, truly true collaboration, true understanding of of cultures.

It was quite the undertaking all these years to get from there to now to.

But it just shows you keep working.

If you keep working, you're going to figure things out.

I think the biggest thing is culturally reaching out to one another.

You have two different types of music, but both beautiful.

And in this project, they are treated absolutely equally.

There's no putting one above the other.

And I love that.

When we musicians of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra played together with American Indian musicians, we automatically learn about their stories.

We're opening doors, and it's not about the skin deep things that in today's world of money and fame and, you know, the skin deep things, there's more roots to this.

And so visiting, like all of my good friends here with the symphony, you know, there's so many different routes that are down from from a lot of different races, nationalities and being able to share that.

I mean, I do think that any time cultures have an honest exchange of information and experience in very personal ways, I think that helps to break down a lot of the artificial.

Barriers that exist.

And to the extent that I hope we're succeeding with that, I think it's becoming more and more relevant.

The key moments in my recollection, you guys can correct me if I'm wrong was Melvin Young Bear stood up and said, we sing the old songs.

We're a traditional drumming group, and our hope is to pass our tradition on to the next generation.

And I said, Bingo, that's exactly what we do as a symphony orchestra.

We play over 500 years worth of music, and we hope to pass it on.

We hope to add to it and and leave it better than we found it, you know, and pass it on to the next generation.

To me, that was the moment where the bridge began to form.

My son is part of this today.

Yeah.

He's learning.

It's exciting because the next generation is getting involved now.

I was thinking about this poem by Shel Silverstein.

It's called No Difference.

I will read it really quickly as I think it's very relevant.

Small as a peanut, big as a giant.

We're all the same size when we turn off the light, Rich as a sultan poor as a mite We're all worth the same When we turn off the light, red, black or orange, yellow or white, we all look the same when we turn off the light.

So maybe the way to make everything right is for God to just reach out and turn off the light.

I feel like making music is just like turning off the light.