Grandmother Song by Brent Michael Davids, featuring Narragansett Tribal Vocalist Victoria Hazard. Recorded live by the Rhode Island Wind Ensemble on May 19, 2024. Videography by Jack Zornado jackzornado.com/.
Grandmother Song
Brent Michael Davids (Mohican/Munsee-Lenape) is a professional composer and a music warrior for native equity and parity, especially in concert music where there is little indigenous influence. Davids places Native voices front and center. He originated and co-founded the award-winning Native American Composer Apprentice Project (NACAP), championing indigenous youth to compose their own written music. He uses indigenous instruments, including handmade quartz flutes, and pens performable notations that are themselves visual works of art. Davids is co-director of the Lenape Center in Manhattan, and is enrolled in the Stockbridge-Munsee Community. His composer career spans nearly five decades, with countless awards and commissions from America’s most celebrated organizations and ensembles.
Grandmother Song is an introduction to the Mohican tradition of “sung syllables” or what Native Americans call “vocables.” Combining them with traditional wood flute songs, the composer offers a fresh look at the sound of Native American songs. Band instruments are performed less as musical instruments and more as talking sticks, singing reeds, rustling winds and shooting thunder. Through this ballad, performers are given the materials to understand how Native Americans celebrate the world around them through the blending of words and song.
9 сен 2024
