Navajo country/western artist Victoria Blackie 2012
...At a youthful 23 years of age, Victoria Blackie, who is a member of the Navajo Nation is fast
becoming known for her vocal talents. The Academy of International Recording Artists has nominated
Blackie as the AIRA Female Vocalist of the Year for her international airplay in Europe, Canada, Australia,
New Zealand and the Pacific Rim. The AIRA recognizes new artists who have scored big in the international
charts on the Pacers Radio Network. "
Robert Mirabal (born October 6.1966) is a Pueblo musician and Native American flute player and maker from Taos Pueblo, New Mexico.
His flutes are world renowned and have been displayed at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of the American Indian. An award-winning musician and leading proponent of world music, Mirabal performs worldwide, sharing flute songs, tribal rock, dance, and storytelling.
Mirabal was twice named the Native American Music Awards' Artist of the Year, and received the Songwriter of the Year award three times. He was featured in Grammy Award winning album, Sacred Ground: A Tribute to Mother Earth in 2006 for Best Native American Music Album
Mirabal also published a book of storytelling poetry and prose in 1994 entitled Skeletons of a Bridge and is currently writing a second book, Running Alone in Photographs. Aside from his artistic talents, Mirabal is a father and a farmer, living in Taos Pueblo and participating in the traditional ways and rituals of his people.
Raised traditionally by his mother and grandparents on the pueblo, and born in 1966, Mirabal spoke Tiwa at home and began making flutes at the age of 19. In school, he had learned how to play clarinet, saxophone, piano, and drums, but found his true musical voice in the traditional Native American flute. He met the renowned Native American flute player R. Carlos Nakai as a young man and was greatly inspired by him.
He moved to New York City, playing in a multicultural band made up of a Senegalese guitarist, a Cape Verdean drummer and Haitian keyboardist. There, Mirabal immersed himself in the sound of hip-hop, funk and R&B, which would inform his later trademark music.
He recorded an independent debut album in 1988, and went on to land a contract with Warner Western and later, Silver Wave Records. His first projects were generally focused on traditional music consisting of Native American flute and percussion. One of his early albums, entitled Land was originally composed for two Japanese avant-garde modern dancers Eiko and Koma, who choreographed a dance production inspired by their impressions of the land around Taos. Cedar and clay flutes, percussion, rattles, and traditional vocals were used throughout the album. Reynaldo Lujan, a percussionist who would go on to collaborate with Mirabal for over a decade, played on the album along with Mark Andes. Each song told a different story about the land around Taos Mountain. The acclaimed performance toured Japan, Europe and the U.S. and in 1992, Mirabal was given New York's Dance and Performance Bessie Award for the score.
In 1996, Mirabal collaborated with Grammy Award-winning Native American singer-songwriter Bill Miller on an album Native Suite-Chants: Dances and the Remembered Earth. The project was both experimental and traditional, featuring flute and percussion as well as Mohican pow-wow singing.
All these disparate interests and experiences led to the band Mirabal in 1995. Bassist Mark Andes, from the '60s band Spirit and '80s rock group Heart, joined Robert along with Reynaldo Lujan. In 1997, they released the groundbreaking album Mirabal that fused rock, funk, and other contemporary forms of music with traditional music, drawing on the legacy of other Native American pop/rock musicians (such as Buffy Sainte-Marie) but creating a unique sound that would set Mirabal apart and gain further mainstream attention.
Mirabal came to greater national prominence during his performance in PBS' 1998 musical dance production, Spirit: A Journey in Dance, Drum, and Song, for which he composed the soundtrack with traditional flute and percussion. Due to the popularity of the program, the network went on to produce a music/dance program centered entirely on Mirabal and his traditional/rock fusion music in 2002, entitled Music from a Painted Cave. The program and its corresponding CD release were enthusiastically received by mainstream audiences and became a benchmark world music album.
Mirabal's In the Blood CD (2007) on Star Road Records (www.starroadrecords.com) was featured in New Mexico Magazine for their October 2007 issue. The reviewer wrote that "it is one of his finest to date." His native state's tourism magazine lauded the CD's "lively danceable rhythms (that) should appeal to mainstream radio.... Mirabal (is) one of the trailblazers of tribal rock....Mirabal was also featured in a New Mexico Magazine story about Native American flute players.
In 2011 Miribal joins the avant-garde string quartet ETHEL for a collaborative tour titled Music of the Sun. This is his second collaboration with the group, with whom he performed at BAM's Next Wave Festival in 2008.
Jessa Rae Growing-Thunder...2012 Miss Indian World
A native Montanan has been crowned as the new "Miss Indian World."
Jessa rae Growing-Thunder from Poplar, Montana was crowned Saturday night at the 29th Annual Gathering of Nations. Growing-Thunder is a member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribes. She received the honor out of 28 Native American women.
Amateur video shot in New Mexico of beautiful Native American Faces and Culture ....Public Events
....Jingle dress is a dance dress worn by women participating in the "Jingle Dress Dance" at a Pow wow. Made of cloth, the dress includes several rows of metal cones, which are sewn across the dress on the skirt (and blouse, in some areas). The metal cones create a jingling sound as the dancer moves. The traditional Jingle Dress Dance is characterized by the jingle dress and light footwork danced close to ground. The dancer dances in a pattern, her feet never cross, nor does she dance backward or turn a complete circle. Compared to the original dance, the contemporary dance can be fancier, with intricate footwork and the dress design is often cut to accommodate these footwork maneuvers. Contemporary dancers do often cross their feet, turn full circles and dance backwards. Such moves exemplify the differences between contemporary and traditional jingle dress dancing.
Amateur video shot in New Mexico of beautiful Native American Faces and Culture ....Public Events
The Navajo world is stringently gendered, with male objects characterized by a "static reality," and females an "active reality".... This "static reality" is identifiable with the rigidly structured Navajo ceremonial life, which for the most part is male-dominated. "Active reality," on the other hand, refers to Navajo social and economic life, which is defined by movement and change...
The epitome of this active reality is Changing Woman, whose qualities described in myth are superimposed in contemporary Navajo life.
The earth and its life-giving, life sustaining, and life-producing qualities are associated with and derived from Changing Woman. It is not surprising, therefore, that women tend to dominate in social and economic affairs. Women are the heads of most domestic groups, the clans are matrilineal, and the land and sheep traditionally were controlled by the women of residential groups.
Changing Woman's mythical, metaphorical, and pragmatic implications are an excellent vehicle with which to approach other salient areas of Navajo culture. Through an analysis of Changing Woman as described in Paul Zolbrod's version of the Navajo Creation Story, Dine bahane', the symbolic motifs inherent in her mythology can be isolated, identified, and applied to the larger holistic analysis of Changing Woman in Navajo culture.
Witherspoon asserts that Changing Woman is the child of First Boy (Sa'ah Naaghaii) who represents thought, and First Girl (Bik'eh H-zh-), who represents speech. Together, Sa'ah Naaghaii and Bik'eh H-zh- "constitute in linguistic form the ideal world of the Navajo, and they contain the most important ideas and concepts of the Navajo world".
Sa'ah naaghaii and bik'eh h-zh- link into vital concepts of inner and outer forms. All living things have inner and outer forms, and "to achieve well-being the inner forms must harmonize and unify with Sa'ah Naagh‡ii," and the outer forms must do the same with Bik'eh H-zh- . Changing Woman represents a synthesis of sa'ah naaghaii, which translates to "the capacity of all life and living things to achieve immortality through reproduction," and bik'eh h-zh-, which "represents the peace and harmony essential to the perpetuation of all living species" .
According to Zolbrod, Changing Woman is introduced into the Navajo Creation story at a time of chaos and infertility. The Emergence People in the fifth world had been terrorized by the Binaayee', or monsters, and so only First Man, First Woman, and old man and wife, and their two young children survived. This is significant because without Changing Woman the human race would have ended here, as the adults were past child bearing age and the children related by blood.
For four days, the mountain Ch'ool'i'i was covered with a dark cloud that slowly descended down its base. One day, First Man decided to investigate and set out chanting a optimistic song. He ascended the mountain and at the tip, right when lightning flashed and a rainbow showered him with vibrant colors, did he find Changing Woman.
He looked down at his feet where he heard a baby crying. But he beheld only a turquoise figure. In it, however, he recognized the likeness of a female. It was no larger than a newborn child, but its body was fully proportioned like a woman's body.
First Man brought the figurine back to First Woman, unsure of what to do with it. Changing Woman only remained with them for fourteen days, after which they took her to a ceremony on Ch'ool'i'i, where Nilchi the Wind transformed her into a living deity, along with her sister, White Shell Woman.
The next significant event in Changing Woman's narrative is the myth of her sexual union with the Sun, and her birth to a son named Monster Slayer. On the mountainside, Changing Woman and her sister were lonely and felt strange attractions toward different things. They decided to explore this, and so for four days Changing Woman lay on a rock "with her feet to the east and her legs spread comfortably apart. This way she could relax as she observed the sun make its path across the sky. That way it could shine its warmth fully upon her". White Shell Women did the same thing in a shallow pool, letting the water flow around her.
Both the sun's rays and the water are images of intercourse, and therefore, it is not surprising that in four days, the women discovered that they were pregnant. In four more days they each delivered boys, which were placed in traditional cradleboards by First Man.
After Monster Slayer meets his father the Sun, and eventually rids the world of monsters with his help, the Sun asks Changing Woman to move to a special house in the West with him. Zolbrod recreates this scene, stressing Changing Woman's individuality as she asks for a special house in the West, and Sun asks why he should build it for her.
"I will tell you why," she said to him.
"You are male and I am female.
"You are of sky and I am of earth.
"You are constant in your brightness, but I must change with the seasons.
"You move constantly at the edge of heaven, while I must be fixed in one place...
"Remember, as different as we are, you and I, we are of one spirit. As dissimilar as we are, you and I, we are of equal worth...Unlike each other as you and I are, there can be no harmony in the universe as long as there is no harmony between us."
Through Changing Woman's speech, Zolbrod successfully captures the tenuous, but essentially harmonious, relationship of Changing Woman and the Sun, after which every couple should model.It is after this that the Sun declares the scope of Changing Woman's power: "...Whiteshell woman will attend to her children and provide their food. Everywhere I go over the earth she will have charge of female rain. I myself will control male rain. She will be in charge of vegetation everywhere for the benefit of Earth people" .
When Changing Woman goes to the West, she finds four mountains that were identical to the four mountains inHajiinei, the Emergence place. After dancing on the tops of these mountains, she sits down and rubs an "outer layer of skin from under her left arm with her right hand" . This skin developed into two adult males and two females, from whom descended the clan Hon‡gh‡ahnii, meaning He Walks Around One Clan.
Then she rubbed the outer layer of skin from under her right arm with her left hand. This too developed into two adult males and females, who eventually became the clan Kin yaa'‡anii, meaning the Towering House People.
After this, she rubbed an outer layer of her skin from her left breast with her right hand. This changed into two adult males and two females as well, who eventually became T- d'ch''''nii, or the Bitter Water Clan.
She again rubbed skin from her breast, this time the right one, with her left hand. Four adults, two men and two women, were formed, who became Bit'ahnii, or Within His Cover People.
She did this two more times, one rubbing skin from between her breasts, thereby forming what would become known as Hashtl'ishnii, or the Mud Clan. The last time she rubbed skin from between her shoulder blades, forming the Close to Her Body Clan.
After she created all of these people, she took them with her to live in the West.
Although this next passage is not present in Zolbrod's text, it is crucial to defining Changing Woman's identity. It is revealed that, "As the seasons advance, [Changing Woman] becomes old, it is true, but she has the power to reverse the process, becoming young again by degrees, as two children, deifically 'borrowed' from the original cornfield, testified:
When we came in, our grandmother lay curled up, nearly killed with old age. She got up and walked with a cane of whiteshell to a room at the east. She came out again somewhat stronger. Then, supported by a cane of turquoise, she went into the south room. She came back walking unaided. She went next into a room at the west. She came out a young woman. She went into the north room and returned, a young girl so beautiful that we bowed our heads in wonder.
This passage is significant not only because it demonstrates Changing Woman's power of rejuvenation and the cyclical aspect of her nature, but also because it encodes several different layers of symbolism working together. For example, the two canes she rests on are made of white shell and turquoise, which are intimately identified with her. Furthermore, her progression from old age to youth is marked by her visit to four different rooms, each located in a cardinal direction. She reverses the usual connotations of direction by first visiting the east as an old lady, which is symbolic of birth and spring, and ending in the North as a young girl, which is symbolic of death and winter . In a traditional Dine progression, she would have ended with the East as a young girl.
