"We touch a lot of hearts wherever we sing.... getting in
touch with the land, getting in touch with our Native soul....
We're bringing it back, and people are hearing this music which
they hadn't heard." Blackfoot singer/songwriter Olivia
Tailfeathers stops speaking and softly begins to tap her drum. The
circle falls silent. Fourteen students and eight adults sit rapt
as she begins her plaintive song. Tentatively, each takes a turn
singing a part of the chorus. Some beat the rhythm with
instruments of their own. Another taps his feet. Together they
sing The Traveling Song, written in 1995 by a gathering of
Aboriginal women at the Banff Centre for the Arts.
A group of young students from Kehewin reserve near Bonnyville travelled by bus
late into the previous night to participate in this workshop at the Alberta
Theatre Projects rehearsal hall in Calgary this past November. They've come to
meet some of the finest Aboriginal women singers on the continent.
Oliva Tailfeathers, a traditional Native dancer most of her life, helps lead the
workshop. As music educator on the Blood reserve for 12 years, she's taught the
songs and rhythms of the hand drum, rattle and Native flute. As producer and
founder of the Kainaiwa Grassland Singers, she's travelled with them to
festivals, conferences and schools in Canada and the U.S. Tailfeathers is here
with the 1998 version of the Aboriginal Women's Voices project, produced by the
Aboriginal Arts Program at the Banff Centre. Proceeds from the Full Circle
Concert at the Arts Centre's Max Bell Theatre will support the Aboriginal Arts
Music Scholarship Fund at the Banff Centre.
Marrie Mumford, Artistic Director of the Aboriginal Arts Program at the Banff
Centre, was one of the initiators of the Aboriginal Women's Voices project in
1995. "We knew that there was Aboriginal women's music. grandmothers and
aunties who held those songs, songs in their language," she explains.
"You remember the songs that were sung to you by your grandmother, your
grandfather, your auntie," says Mumford. "And if the songs are in the
language, you will also remember the language. . . The elders tell us, if you
lose the language, you lose the culture. So it's really important that we pass
the teaching in the language and the culture on." She pauses. "In
Anishnawbe (Ojibwa)," she says, "it's called 'lighting the next
fire,' so we're lighting the eighth fire-passing that cultural knowledge- on to
the next generation."
Heritage Community Foundation Presents
