Voices That Need to Be Heard

High school students from reservations speak their

minds through the voice of a string quartet.
You know, we [classical musicians] kind of live in the shadow of Beethoven
and Bartok, says Clare Hoffman, co-founder and Artistic Director of the
Grand Canyon Music Festival. Were kind of afraid to put paper to pencil
because it wont measure up . . . These students, they dont have that burden
of history on them. Theyre just going to write whats in their head. Theyre
just going to write what they want to hear.

Sweet Plantain rehearses with Greyhills Academy student Lisa Robbins and NACAP composer in
residence Raven Chacon.

Who are these fearless composers? Thirty high school students. They are
participants in the Native American Composer Apprentice Project or NACAP,
part of the Grand Canyon Music Festival. Each year, professional composers
drive to remote schools stretched out over hundreds of miles across the
Navajo, Hopi and Salt River Pima reservations near the Grand Canyon. In an
intensive, weeklong course the composers teach students to develop musical
ideas and write them out to be performed by a string quartet. The program
culminates during the Grand Canyon Music Festival over Labor
Day weekend.

Performance Today has previously featured concerts from the Grand Canyon
Music Festival, but we wanted to see this collaboration in action so
photographer/videographer Nate Ryan and I traveled to Grand Canyon
National Park. This morning, were sitting large classroom at the community
building in the park. Inside the room there are two rings of tables and chairs,
one inside the other. Teachers and students sit in the outer circle to observe.
In the inner circle a student composer, a teacher and a string quartet face
each other while everyone compares musical notes on the page. The NACAP
participants are rehearsing their compositions with the quartet Sweet
Plantain ahead of the public concert later in the evening.

It takes a lot of courage to reveal your innermost musical ideas to perfect

strangers. One by one, the NACAP students sit in the middle with Raven
Chacon, the NACAP composer in residence who has taught them how to write
down their music and refine their ideas. The young composers have given the
performers a lot of techniques to work through: there are coordinated
pizzicato or plucked notes, slides that mimic the sound of a Chinese erhu,
ricochets with the bow bouncing up and down on the string, grand finales
emphasized by a stomp.

Student composer Tomasina Yellowman with Raven Chacon.

Co-founder and artistic director of the Grand Canyon Music Festival Clare
Hoffman organizes students' musical scores.
Sweet Plantain violinist Orlando Wells offers a student some feedback
about her piece.
Most of the students approach the conversation like Brevin Norton, a 17-year-
old senior at Whitehorse High School in Montezuma Creek, Utah. Hes all
business. Norton gives Sweet Plantain a few notes at the beginning about
dynamics and clarifies some of the instructions hes written in the score for
his piece called Its Just the Beginning. As Sweet Plantain plays his music, a
shy smile creeps across Nortons face. When they finish, Norton quietly
encourages them. Yeah, that was good. Thanks, he says.

NACAP Rehearsal at Grand Canyon Music Festival

Rehearsal of Brevin Nortons piece Its Just the Beginning.

To be clear, these pieces sound nothing like the music of Beethoven and
Mozart that might come to mind when you hear string quartet. That would
be impossible. To begin with, Chaconthe composer and teachersays
despite a lot of community interest in music, many of the schools he works
with do not have music or arts programs that would expose students to music
history. Second, these students write music that reflects their lives today
lives that are considerably different than that of young Ludwig van Beethoven
as a teenager in 18th century Bonn, Germany.
 Composer Raven Chacon

Raven Chacon talks about musical techniques NACAP students use.

According to Chacon, the NACAP students bring in musical ideas from all
over. It might be the traditional music from their tribes, he says. It might
also be popular music. And weve had students say theyre influenced by
movie soundtracks or video game soundtracks. Many of the students share
Chacons interest in heavy metal and horror movie scores. Every year,
Chacon says, a student will create a new sound that Ive never heard before
and its always done because theyre experimenting with combining effects
and combining techniques.

Jared Wonnacott is Nortons teacher at Whitehorse High School in Utah. Hes

driven with Norton and four other students about six hours across the desert
to get to this rehearsal and performance. That is a big commitment for a
school assignment, but Wonnacott says the stakes are a lot higher than
writing a piece of music.
 Teacher Jared Wonnacott

Jared Wonnacott on music's impact on emotional health.

You know schools generally spend a lot of time talking about academic and
mental success, he explains, but I think music gives you a chance to address
the emotional health . . . I think its important for students to see the good of
being sad and the good of being happy and the good of being angry and being
able to express it in a way that is healthy. If every student could express their
anger and frustration through music, then wed have less violence in the
schools. If every student could express their sorrow and longing and
depression through music then wed have less suicides and things like that. I
think that theres so much emotional health that can come from being able to
express your emotions through music.
 NACAP student Brevin Norton

Working with the non-profit NavajoYES, Brevin Norton and his classmates
have come all this way to kick off their school year to a memorable start.
Some of the students have never seen the Grand Canyon before. This
weekend they camp in the national park, hike in the canyon, go to music
festival concerts, meet students from other NACAP schools and hear their
music performed. Wonnacott says this kind of positive encouragement sets
the tone for the year. Being a teenager is rough. There are the typical ups and
downs of relationships and academic stress and there are the traumas you
cant predict. The uncertainty of life out of school. Car accidents. Teen
suicide. According to a 2014 report from the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services, American Indian and Alaska Native young people ages 15
24 are more than three times as likely to take their own life as the general
American population in the same age group. Wonnacott says the creative
experience and affirming feedback of the NACAP program give these young
people coping mechanisms. To find emotional release in music makes them
better musicians, but also makes them better people, he says. Norton agrees:
For me, music is like a way to express yourself.

NACAP student Malika Oldman

Malika Oldman, a student from Whitehorse High School in Montezuma

Creek, Utah.
 NACAP student Kathy Edaakie

Kathy Edaakie, a student from Whitehorse High School in Montezuma Creek,

Utah.

The Grand Canyon Music Festival has been initiating education outreach
projects since 1984, its second year of existence. Often Hoffman and the other
performing musicians would drive to Tuba City, Ariz. on the Navajo Nation
and play a special concert. But we started to feel like Brigadoon, she says.
You know the story of Brigadoon, this town that emerges once every 100
years or so and then disappears without a trace. Wed come once a year, play
a concert for the school students and then leave. And it felt as though we were
sort of leaving people scratching their heads . . . We really wanted to do
something that had more of an impact.

In 2000, the Grand Canyon Music Festival teamed up with Mohican

composer Brent Michael Davids and together developed the idea for the
Native American Composer Apprentice Project, based on a similar program
he developed in Minnesota. Rather than play for an audience, in 2001
Michael Davids drove to Tuba City to listen.
To get to Tuba City from the Grand Canyon, drive northeast about 80 miles
across the Painted Desert of Arizona. Along the south rim of canyon in the
national park, the photographer and I were surprised to find a verdant forest
of pines, junipers and pinyons, but the road to Tuba City is the Arizona we
recognized from rugged truck commercials.

Along Arizona Highway 64, heading east from the Grand Canyon to Tuba
City.

Along Arizona Highway 64, heading east from the Grand Canyon to Tuba
City.

Along Arizona Highway 64, heading east from the Grand Canyon to Tuba
City.

The dirt is red and the brush is green. It was monsoon season in the desert.
We could see the rain coming as we drove up over the bluff and in no time,
the windshield wipers were on maximum speed and the flat road gained
inches of water. Motorcyclists pulled over to wait it out. It was easy to
imagine getting caught in a flash flood. But just as quickly as the rain started,
it stopped and we were treated to a beautiful, full-arc rainbow. Approaching
Tuba City, we passed several arts and crafts stands lining the highway. We
stopped at one as the road dried out and a Navajo woman offered us delicated
beaded and silver necklaces. One for $6, two for $10.

A break in the storm on Highway 64.

The beginnings of the Painted Desert in Arizona.

Even though we had just been through a heavy downpour, Tuba City was dry.
The town of about 7,000 people rarely gets rain. Tuba City is supremely
modest: compact homes, a tidy but not sprawling medical center, lots of
American-made cars and trucks. The modesty belies some exceptional talent.
This is where U.S. Marines first recruited 29 remarkable Navajo young men
to create an impenetrable military code during World War II. The Navajo
Code Talkers, as they were called, baffled German and Japanese
cryptographers. Tuba City has turned out some of th best athletes in the state,
especially in girls volleyball and basketball and boys cross-country. It also
has what Clare Hoffman, the Grand Canyon Music Festival artistic director,
calls a culture of composing.

Entering Tuba City on U.S. Route 160.

Tuba City High School.
Tuba City High School.
Tuba City High School.

One of the first NACAP participants in Tuba City was Michael Begay. As a
high school student at Greyhills Academy, Begay and the school librarian
often talked about music, but Begay had never considered writing music
other than improvising on his electric guitar. Then in the early 2000s the
librarian encouraged him to sign up for the new NACAP program. Begay was
hooked. He wrote music with the NACAP program every year, even a few
times after he graduated high school. Begay studied music recording in
Tempe and worked as a radio producer in Tuba City for a few years, all the
while playing and writing music. He started volunteering with NACAP in
2006 and in 2007 became the NACAP assistant composer in residence.
(Performance Today interviewed him in 2009). Since then NACAP has
expanded to schools in four towns, but the Tuba City contingent is still one of
the biggest, including Tuba City High School, Greyhills Academy and now the
junior high school students of Tuba City Boarding School. NACAP has been
teaching students in Tuba City to compose music for 15 years or half of a
generation. This year Begay coached all of the Tuba City students.

NACAP alumnus and now composer in residence Michael Begay.

Im always sort of nervous before the final concert, Begay says, but I was in
their shoes before once and I cant wait to hear it. Although the NACAP
students preview their pieces using computer programs that generate the
sounds of the instruments, they usually doubt that their piece is going to work
in performance. Begay says he always tells them that the musicians make all
the difference. Once you get the human spirit behind it, he tells us, it just
comes alive.

The Shrine of the Ages in the Grand Canyon National Park.

The final NACAP concert takes place at the Shrine of the Ages, a stone
building in the national park that also hosts religious services. The string
quartet Sweet Plantain has rehearsed the music and sits ready on stage as the
young composers, their teachers and family members and other park tourists
file in. Begay enthusiastically greets each student while Clare Hoffman makes
sure that everyone has a program. Raven Chacon announces that the concert
will have a slight delay because the students from Whitehorse High School
were caught in a thunderstorm while hiking and are trying to dry off in the
restrooms.

Brevin Norton introduces his piece while Sweet Plantain violinist Orlando
Wells looks on.

Orlando Wells.

Brevin Nortons piece This is Just the Beginning is first on the program.
This is where the emotion tumbles out. He introduces himself and then with a
lump in his throat explains that he wrote the piece for two friends and
classmates who died recently. Sweet Plantain takes a moment to collect
themselves and then play the piece with serious conviction. Then another
student stands up, introduces herself and says her piece was inspired by her
recovery from a difficult moment in life. The next student dedicates her piece
to a deceased family member whom she misses dearly. Student after student
from Whitehorse High School, from Red Valley Cove High School, from Salt
River High School, from Tuba City and from Chinle High School talk about
the things that have made them happy or sad or nostalgic or mad or curious
as they put those ideas into music. We happen to sit behind Begay who is
giddy with excitement. Each time the quartet plays a phrase with passionate
energy or digs into a line, he vigorously nods his head and smiles at the
composer. At the end of the concert, the audience claps for the quartet and
then everyone gives the young composers and their teachers a standing
ovation.

Malika Oldman introduces her piece "I Do Not Know."

Composer in residence Raven Chacon listens in the audience.

Composer in residence Michael Begay reacts to a piece.

After a few photos, the musicians of Sweet Plantain go back to their dressing
room to pack up their instruments, still riding the adrenaline high of a
performance. I had some moments up there where I had to kind of hold it
together, violinist Orlando Wells says. During the rehearsal earlier in the
day, the quartet and the NACAP students had mostly discussed the logistics
of their pieces such as how to play the tremolo or how wide vibrato should be.
This concert brought emotional depth to the music that Wells and the other
musicians didnt realize was there.

The audience gives the performers and the composers a standing ovation.
 Founder and artistic director Clare Hoffman

Clare Hoffman on the schools that participate in NACAP.

The next day we meet again with Clare Hoffman, the artistic director of the
Grand Canyon Music Festival. Its another gorgeously sunny, gentle day so we
sit on a log outside the Shrine of the Ages. Thirty-three years ago, Hoffman
and her husband came to the Grand Canyon for the first time, looking for
inspiration. She was having a tough time as a professional flutist and had just
read Willa Cathers novel The Song of the Lark about a singer who comes to
the canyon. Hoffman told us that on that very first trip, she often thought of
the novels most famous line, spoken as the singer examines a piece of
ancient pottery:

What was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to
imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself
life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to
lose?

To be a classical musician, one must obsess over the perfection of technique,

the competition, and the recognition but in making such a flawless sheath, its
easy to overlook the water it contains. Hoffman knew she would come back to
the canyon and that she would play a concert here.

People are really moved when they come here, she tells us. Its almost a
spiritual feeling that people have when they come. The Grand Canyon
National Park tries to meet every tourist need with gift shops and restaurants
and IMAX movies, Hoffman continues, but wheres that other thing that
people can experience while theyre here that is about that kind of spiritual
connection that they find when theyre here? She hopes its in the music of
these concerts.

This place, the Grand Canyon Music Festival and NACAP have changed her,
she says. Hoffman would have been very happy playing in an orchestra she
explains, but this experience has forced her to open my eyes and to look
beyond, just as the canyon does.

Im always just amazed and proud of the students and proud of the teaching
composers, she goes on. One of the reasons we started [NACAP] was
because we felt that there arent enough Native American voices in the
American music mix. We really need to hear more of these voices and we
need to empower the students. And let them know that we want to hear their
voices and their voices need to be heard.
Credits

Suzanne Schaffer, Reporter and Producer

Nate Ryan, Photographer and Videographer

Thanks to Clare Hoffman, Raven Chacon, Michael Begay

and Central Sound at Arizona PBS and the Sidney E.
Frank Foundation for making this feature possible.

Performance Today is produced by American Public

Media.