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MUSIC Musicians and scholars hear familiar rhythms in the roots of the quintessential American art form, inspiring discussion and performances at the museum
By Kara Briggs
Washington, D.C.—The blues are considered to be rooted in the traditions of gospel singing and African-American folk music. But Elaine Bomberry, host of “Rez Bluez,” a show on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in Canada, explained to an audience at the National Museum of the American Indian that the roots of this American form of music also extend deep into Native American musical traditions. “The whole heartbeat of the blues is very much like our drum,” Bomberry said, during a discussion called “The Blues: Roots, Branches and Beyond.” Ron Welburn, a Native poet and scholar of jazz, said that he can hear the influences of music from many Native nations on early blues recordings. “There are things that say to me that someone knows something about stomp dancing, a part of Southeastern Native American music from before European contact,” he said. “It’s the call-and-response phrasing, and the length of the statement, which may be longer than the response.” The Aug. 22 conversation was followed by a concert in the museum’s Indian Summer Showcase series. Performances featured blues artists George Leach of the Sta’atl’imx Nation in British Columbia; the Rez Bluez All-Starz with Murray Porter, Mohawk, and Beaver Thomas, who is Cowesseness First Nation; plus special guests Corey Harris, recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” and string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops. The blues were birthed in a unique moment of history when the slave trade and colonization of the American South forced people and their musical traditions to come together, explained Welburn, an English professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Plantations brought together Irish indentured servants, African slaves and also Native slaves. “All lived together, all procreated together,” said Justin Robinson of the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Later escaped slaves found refuge in Native communities from the South and, in time, up the Underground Railroad to the Six Nations in Canada. “The Underground Railroad was Tuscarora Indian trails to the Niagara River and across. Tuscaroras would bring the escaped slaves across to Six Nations, where I’m from,” Bomberry said. Watch a clip from Bomberry’stelevision show at www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kpi_vQOb4w. When the blues began to be recorded in the early 20th century, many artists self-identified as Native American. Welburn said Charley Patton, who is called the father of Mississippi Delta blues, was Choctaw. Scrapper Blackwell was Eastern Band Cherokee. Listen to Blackwell at www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjZO44o0E8A. But ancestry isn’t as important to musicologists as what can be documented in the music, said Welburn, who is Gingaskin/Assateague, Cherokee and African American. “They want to know what a person picked up from another musical source, like four beats to the measure,” he said. “Powwow drumming is four beats to a measure.” Welburn counts: boom, boom, boom, boom. He hears this beat in the earliest blues recordings, though later it would be expanded upon. “‘Chika, ching, chika, ching, chika, ching’ was started by a drummer—a Mohawk and African American guy, Jesse Price,” he said. Price lived in Kansas City and toured with the likes of Count Basie on a circuit that included Oklahoma. His peers said they believe his drumming style came from Native music. “Because of that location you can associate certain dances,” Welburn said. “In round dancing, there is a ‘chika, ching’ syncopation. Even guys who have bells or deer toes on garters make a similar sound walking around.” The blues’ call-and-response song structure, which has been attributed to African-American folk music, may also have older roots in Native American music. “It’s not a matter of someone trying to take credit,” Welburn said. “It’s about finding the roots.” Blues and jazz artists have made similar observations. Oscar Pettiford, the late Cherokee, Choctaw and African-American bandleader, gave an interview in 1960 to the magazine Jazz Times, in which he stated that jazz attempts to render an American Indian beat. In the 1970s, Welburn remembers Lewis McMillan, a drummer with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra who was mixed-race Cherokee, telling him, “Ronny, don’t ever let anyone tell you that our people didn’t have anything to do with jazz.” Recently, singer and percussionist Cyril Neville, the youngest of the famed New Orleans’ group the Neville Brothers, told Bomberry, “Sister, we both own the blues.” Murray Porter, who first heard B.B. King as a teenager at the Six Nations in Ontario while listening late into the night to radio from Chicago, said the genre has always been about cross-pollination. “It’s not an African thing; it’s not a Native thing,’’ he said. Later, in concert before more than 1,000 people at the museum, he improvised a sort of musical invocation, singing, “Everybody get together. Everybody get together. Everybody get together and let the good times roll.” |
PEOPLE Anne Gunnison’s Mellon Foundation project is to protect the plastic materials in a colorful mobile by Dunne-za Nation artist Brian Jungen By Kara Briggs
Suitland, Md.—For Anne Gunnison, there is a great future in plastics. Gunnison, a Mellon fellow at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, is studying how to protect and preserve the plastics used in a large mobile that the museum plans to install this fall titled “Crux (as seen from those who sleep on the surface of the earth under the night sky)” by artist Brian Jungen of the Dunne-za Nation near Vancouver, B.C. To view some of Jungen’s works, including “Crux,” go to http://www.catrionajeffries.com/b_b_jungen_work_55.html. “It’s very colorful,” said Gunnison, who is 29 and from Sacramento, Calif. “He uses a lot of different colors of luggage to make figures. By starting now, we can take steps to conserve the piece upfront.” A recent graduate with a master’s degree from University College of London’s Institute of Archaeology, Gunnison’s research will be in the growing field of conserving plastics. A million dollar grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation currently funds conservation fellowships and internships.The museum strategically intends these internships to foster a new generation of professionals adept in the innovative ways in which the museum involves Native peoples in the care of materials. “We introduce them to our methodology so they learn about collaboration with the people who created these objects,” said Gina Ward, development officer at the National Museum of the American Indian. “We put culture and collaboration on an equal footing with science.” In 2007 the Mellon Foundation pledged $1.5 million toward an endowment for Advanced Training in Conservation at the museum with the understanding the museum would raise another $3.5 million. To date, the museum has raised all but $500,000 toward this goal. The Mellon fellows have hailed from museums in London, Vienna and Auckland. They have worked in museums such as the Guggenheim, the Chicago Institute of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mellon Foundation donations to other museums are used to fund conservation, develop departments and other works. It is unusual for the foundation’s contribution to be used for a training fellowship program, said Marian Kaminitz, the head of conservation at the museum. Like Gunnison, most leave with a unique specialization after being assigned to an exhibition and being responsible for working with the related indigenous community. Brian Jungen is a celebrated young sculptor whose work from such materials as deconstructed Nikes and luggage has won international acclaim. He has shown in such events as the Biennale in Sydney, Australia. To see that exhibition go to www.bos2008.com/app/biennale/artist/39. This summer he is working with Gunnison, talking through long-term questions such as how much change is acceptable for his plastic. Highly flammable collodion and celluloid plastics began appearing in the 1800s. By the 1920s, plastic was everywhere. Over time, older plastics have decayed, cracking and fading, and sometimes damaging other objects next to them. Now conservationists are taking a proactive approach to caring for contemporary plastics. “Plastics conservation is a growing field,” Gunnison said. She hopes that planning, including perhaps making changes to the environment around the plastic art, will keep Jungen’s mobile from ever needing large-scale repair. Maybe the Mellon fellowship works in somewhat the same way, Kaminitz said. “By training conservators at the start of their careers, the museum can encourage respect for indigenous communities around the world,” she said. “Through the Mellon Fellowship program, we introduce conservators to this methodology and encourage them to fit this approach into their professional work in the future.” |
| ART
Artists interested in participating in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian’s Native Art Market on Dec. 5 and 6 are invited to apply now. “The Native Art Market has become a prime market on the East Coast for Native artists from North and South America,” said Shawn Termin, Lakota, who is co-chairwoman for the market. “Artists expand their buyer and collector base while art patrons of our area expand their collections.” The annual market, which started three years ago, is held at both National Museum of the American Indian locations, in Washington and in New York. Up to 38 Native American artists will be selected for each market, attracting crowds of holiday shoppers. Applications are due by Sept. 14. The market co-chairwomen are Linda Martin, Navajo, who works at the museum in Washington, and Termin, who works at the museum in New York. “While many of the artists at the markets are jewelry artists, the markets strive to present artists showcasing a variety of styles, techniques and regional representation,” Termin said. “All art is designed by the artists attending the market. While price ranges vary, there is something for every buyer.” Download applications at www.nmai.si.edu/artmarket/2009/calltoartists |
MUSEUM The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian asks supporters to host a potluck in honor of its 20th anniversary By Kara Briggs
Washington, D.C.—On Sept. 21, 2004, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian opened with events that attracted over 80,000 Native and non-Native participants and witnesses. During that week five years ago 100,000 visitors entered the museum’s doors. As both the fifth anniversary for the museum in Washington and the twentieth anniversary of the legislation that established the museum approaches, the museum is hoping that everyone—even those who can’t come to Washington—will join in the celebration. So the museum proposes that people hold potlucks to raise awareness and funds in support of museum programs. The target date for the potlucks is November 28th, which is National Native American Heritage Day. In 2009, the museum marks not only the fifth anniversary of the stunning structure in Washington, and also the 20th anniversary of the legislation that established the museum; but also the 15th anniversary of the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian in lower Manhattan; and the 10th anniversary of the Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Md. “The idea of the virtual potluck grew out of a lively discussion with the museum's board of trustees last fall,” said Maggie Bertin, associate director for the museum’s office of museum resources. “We were discussing organizing the anniversary gala in Washington, D.C., and I asked our board how we might better engage our members and friends in Indian Country who could not join us physically in Washington at the gala.” Lucille Echohawk, who is Pawnee and a trustee, suggested that the museum could host a nationwide fundraiser the way some organizations like the American Red Cross do, bringing fundraising to the local level, in homes and community centers across the country. Museum staff expanded the idea by developing a website which will debut in September and allow people to create their own virtual potluck webpage. From there, people will be able to express what the museum means to them, and even email family and friends inviting them to attend their potluck and make a donation. Or people could hold parties in their homes, their offices, their tribal centers, their churches or their classrooms. “We want people to be creative,” said Inger de Montecinos, the museum’s membership program coordinator. “The point of it is to bring the National Museum of the American Indian community out everywhere so people can gather together and celebrate the anniversaries.” Watch for details in the American Indian News Service or at the museum’s website, www.AmericanIndian.si.edu. |
EDUCATION Macklin Becenti, 19, of Pine Springs, Ariz., credits his skill at portraits to his family’s mastery of traditional arts By Kara Briggs
Washington, D.C.—Macklin Becenti, an incoming senior at Valley High School in Sanders, Ariz., has won the 2009 Student Artist Competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and the Office of Indian Education. Becenti traveled from his home on the Navajo Reservation to Washington in late July to be honored at the Office of Indian Education and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. His winning lead pencil drawing, depicting a Navajo woman weaving at her loom while a child does schoolwork, is a subtle interpretation of the competition’s theme, “Tradition is my Life, Education is my Future.” To view all the winning entries, go to kids.indianeducation.org/file/2009_SAC_art_winners.pdf. This year’s competition attracted entries from 604 students from 30 states and more than a dozen Indian nations. Entries were judged in age categories ranging from preschool through high school. Becenti, the winner in the 11th- and 12th-grade category, received the additional honor of being named an Emerging High School Artist by the museum and receiving a trip to Washington. It is “an opportunity of self-discovery and to gain new personal experiences that can only add to personal growth and greater self-confidence that is often needed by young adults,” said Keevin Lewis, Navajo, a programs coordinator at the National Museum of the American Indian. Becenti and his mother, Velma Toddy, live in Pine Springs, a community on the south end of the Navajo Reservation where the 19-year-old said he is related to everyone. Living seven miles from Houck, Ariz., and a 90-minute bus ride from school, Becenti draws, weaves, sculpts, sews moccasins and makes silver jewelry. He credits his grandmother, who makes baskets and pottery; a great aunt who weaves; and his uncles, who work in many traditional Navajo arts, with inspiring his artistry. “When I was small, my uncles who were artists told me I was OK,” Becenti said. After learning of the contest, Toddy said her son stayed up two nights sketching his entry. She told him, “I know you are going to win. I know it. When he brought back the message that he won, I said, ‘I told you so.’” Of the drawing, Becenti explained, “I was thinking about education, and a little child growing up around her grandmother or in her tradition. She just got back from school and is doing her work while her grandmother weaves.” Becenti specializes in portraiture, a skill he developed drawing from photographs. He hopes to study video production in college. His illustration is included in a traveling art exhibition of all the winning entries. It opened at the U.S. Department of Education on July 21, and will also be shown at the National Museum of the American Indian and the Oklahoma City History Center. Indian nations represented among the children who won include Northern Paiute, Sault Ste. Marie Tribes of Chippewa Indians, Cherokee, Gila River Indian Community, Mississippi Band of Choctaw, Hopi, Seminole Tribe, United Houma Nation, Oneida Indian Nation, San Carlos Apache, White Mountain Apache and Ponca Tribe. |
Go to www.nmaie-newservice.com to access high resolution photo page or add editor@nmaie-newservice.com to your address book to receive the HTML version of this news service. The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian is located in Washington, D.C., New York City and Suitland, Md. View online exhibitions at www.AmericanIndian.si.edu The American Indian News Service is edited by Kara Briggs, a Yakama and Snohomish journalist. She owns Red Hummingbird Media Corp., which is contracted by the National Museum of the American Indian to provide this service. Contact her at editor@nmaie-newservice.com or by phone at 503-577-0012. We’re interested in how the American Indian News Service is used. We welcome copies of newspapers that contain news service material, or e-mailed links to online postings. Please forward to Red Hummingbird Media Corp., 8825 34th Ave. NE, Suite L-154, Tulalip, WA 98271; or e-mail to editor@nmaie-newservice.com. Kara Briggs, Editor National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center Cultural Resources Center To opt-out to this publication, please email editor@nmaie-newservice.com. ©Copyright 2009, Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, All Rights Reserved
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