{"id":628,"date":"2016-03-09T23:14:17","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T04:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=628"},"modified":"2016-03-09T23:14:17","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T04:14:17","slug":"dvorak-on-the-reservation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2016\/03\/dvorak-on-the-reservation.html","title":{"rendered":"Dvorak on the Reservation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"LMP-Creekside-Singers\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sisseton, in the northeastern corner of South Dakota, sits within a Dakota Indian reservation called Sisseton Wahpeton. The population \u2013 2,500 \u2013 is half Native American, half non-Native.<\/p>\n

Last Monday night, Sisseton hosted the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra in a program, \u201cDvorak and America,\u201d at the local high school auditorium. This multi-media production, which includes a \u201cvisual presentation\u201d extrapolating the American accent<\/a> of the New World<\/em> Symphony, has been seen throughout the United States for a decade. Unique to South Dakota, however, was the participation of the Creekside Singers of the Pine Ridge Reservation (pictured above) in a symphonic composition by the Native-American composer Brent Michael Davids. Sisseton also produced the most eclectic audience I have ever seen at a symphonic concert. Both the very young and the very old were well represented, as was the local Dakota population.<\/p>\n

Part of the NEH’s “Music Unwound” orchestral consortium<\/a>, this singular adventure in cultural outreach was the latest installment in the South Dakota Symphony\u2019s Lakota Music Project, which makes music for and with Native Americans. The Project\u2019s touring program, comprising back-and-forth musical exchanges, has since 2009 been given nearly thirty times on six reservations. It has also commissioned new works from both Native and non-Native composers. Crucially, it is mutually conceived and implemented by the Symphony and its Native American partners.<\/p>\n

As I have many times observed on this blog, the Dvorak topic<\/a> is protean. His espousal of a future American concert idiom based on \u201cNegro melodies\u201d and Native American lore remains provocative and timely. The \u201cDvorak and America\u201d program plays with particular pertinence in New York City, where it has been produced by both the New York Philharmonic and the late Brooklyn Philharmonic; a city of immigrants, New York took Dvorak to heart. If it ever makes it to Boston, \u201cDvorak and America\u201d will powerfully recall a historic moment when New Englanders denounced Dvorak as a \u201cnegrophile\u201d and shunned his influence and advice. In Fayetteville, presented by the North Carolina Symphony, \u201cDvorak and America\u201d memorably connected with an African-American audience.<\/p>\n

In Sisseton, \u201cDvorak and America\u201d was doubly resonant. Dvorak\u2019s sadness of the prairie, enshrined in the Largo of his great American symphony, instantly evoked the wide horizons directly at hand. The symphony\u2019s many allusions to Longfellow\u2019s The Song of Hiawatha,<\/em> highlighted by visual renderings including the Dance of Pau-Puk Keewis with its moccasin bells (Dvorak\u2019s triangle), served to introduce an Indian reservation to the long-ago Indianists movement of which Dvorak was part.<\/p>\n

How did the Native Americans in the room process the whirling, spinning dance at Hiawatha\u2019s wedding feast? As Dvorak\u2019s \u201cIndian\u201d mode makes no attempt to evoke actual Native American music, we undertook a necessary consideration of what anthropologists call \u201ccultural appropriation.\u201d Our resident anthropologist, Ronnie Theisz, has participated in the Lakota Music Project since its inception. He is an Austrian who upon earning a Ph. D. at NYU took a job on a South Dakota reservation and never looked back. On this occasion, Ronnie contributed a mini-tutorial on the structure and vocal techniques of Lakota song. He also contrasted the nineteenth century\u2019s celebration of the \u201cnoble savage,\u201d as in Longfellow and Dvorak, with such twentieth century Indianist kitsch as Victor Herbert\u2019s \u201cDagger Dance\u201d \u2013 as performed by the South Dakota Symphony; as appropriated by the Hamms Beer cartoon commercials I remember from my childhood. That beer commercial<\/a> drew laughter \u2013 but no such depiction of \u201cinjun country\u201d could conceivably be purveyed today.<\/p>\n

Another participant was Chris Eagle Hawk, an honored elder of the Oglala Lakota Tribe, who eloquently described the role of music in Lakota culture, and the sanctity of the Black Hills.<\/p>\n

The same South Dakota Symphony Dvorak program was given on subscription Saturday and Sunday in Sioux Falls (population 170,000). Not the least remarkable aspect of these three concerts was the caliber of the orchestra itself and of its conductor, Delta David Gier. He has led the South Dakota Symphony since 2004. For many years an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic, he has since raised two children in Sioux Falls. It was he who initiated the Lakota Music Project.<\/p>\n

Gier\u2019s reading of Dvorak\u2019s Largo was the most affecting I have ever encountered. It was also the slowest, and in places the softest. His splendid English horn soloist, Jeffrey Paul, is South Dakota\u2019s principal oboist. He also composes, conducts one of two South Dakota Symphony youth orchestras, and plays the electric guitar.<\/p>\n

The current South Dakota Symphony season puts to shame a major American orchestra that resides in eastern Pennsylvania. There are no celebrity soloists, no Rachmaninoff or Tchaikovsky concertos. The season began with Mahler\u2019s Sixth Symphony, part of an ongoing Mahler cycle that now only lacks Nos. 8 and 10. Next season opens with John Luther Adams’ Become Ocean<\/em>, winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize. In fact, there is contemporary music on every Classics program save the annual semi-staged opera \u2013\u00a0Don Giovanni<\/em>. Last season, it was Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman.<\/em><\/p>\n

These enterprising repertoire choices are doubtless one reason the musicians of the South Dakota Symphony seem as motivated and engaged as any I have encountered among professional American orchestras. I had occasion to chat backstage with the principal double bass, Mario Chiarello. Mario is also the conductor of one of three Sioux Falls high school orchestras. He told me that after 9\/11, his Lincoln High orchestra prepared Mozart\u2019s Requiem in eleven days. He also said that Sioux Falls\u2019 \u201cHarmony\u201d program, modeled on Venezuela\u2019s El Sistema, in conjunction with a separate Suzuki-based program, is producing skilled young instrumentalists in such profusion that they will burst the seams of the city\u2019s existing student symphonic ensembles. He counts 2,631 string players in the Sioux Falls public schools. Many are not native speakers of English.<\/p>\n

My most memorable backstage exchange, however, was with Chris Eagle Hawk. He is a man whose very presence commands attention. He shared an axiom about listening. One should listen with one\u2019s heart, he said, and only later process that with one\u2019s brain. In the meantime, one\u2019s mouth should remain shut. This is a lesson I have never learned. Onstage, during one of three post-concert discussions, I asked Chris what he thought of the New World<\/em> Symphony. \u201cAwesome,\u201d he replied. Was he hearing it for the first time? I innocently inquired. Well, no \u2013 he first encountered Dvorak\u2019s symphony in college long ago. This from a man who grew up in a tent and first spoke English at the age of seven.<\/p>\n

At Sisseton we were greeted by David Flutes, chairman of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, Mayor Terry Jaspers, and Jane and John Rasmussen. Jane is director of the Sisseton Arts Council. She and her husband asked me to inscribe their copy of my book Classical Music in America: a History<\/em> \u2013 which, moreover, they had evidently read. John said that racial tension in Sisseton had considerably abated over the past decade. One reason, he added, was the South Dakota Symphony\u2019s Lakota Music Project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Sisseton, in the northeastern corner of South Dakota, sits within a Dakota Indian reservation called Sisseton Wahpeton. The population \u2013 2,500 \u2013 is half Native American, half non-Native. Last Monday night, Sisseton hosted the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra in a program, \u201cDvorak and America,\u201d at the local high school auditorium. This multi-media production, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-628","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-a8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":637,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628\/revisions\/637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}