Red Leaf Takoja/Heart Beat

Watching the DVD "Red Leaf Takoja: Song of the Heartbeat" (High Star Productions, Rancho de Taos, NM, 2003) emphasized again how music is really the fabric of life, a celebration of life, for North American Indians. In the DVD, Howard Bad Hand, the lead singer of this pow-wow "super group", talks about how the music, and by extension, the drum, is a dynamic expression of the culture, and that it changes as the culture and life of the people changes. For example, one of the Red Leaf Takoja singers, a non-Indian, tells the story of his introduction to traditional Lakota singing and drumming. At the time he joined the group (the early 1970's), traditional songs with words (songs which the elders knew by heart) were making a comeback in pow wow settings. At the time, many songs sung at pow wows did not have words, because of the different languages spoken by the attendees. So, songs were becoming more word-oriented, and the composition of groups were changing as well. In fact, several members of the Red Leaf Takoja singers are women, and they play the drum and sing with the men; this is contrary to the traditional place of women, who would sing behind the men and would not usually play the drum (from what I've read in my research so far).

One of the things I appreciated about watching the Red Leaf Takoja singers was getting to understand the context behind the songs. Time and again, I heard the different kinds of Lakota songs--warrior songs, honoring songs, social dance songs, sacred songs,and intertribal songs--created especially for the occasion. The music is expressive of the moment, meant for specific occasion for specific people in a specific locale, not simply recorded for mass consumption. There are songs encouraging people to dance in a spirit of brotherhood/sisterhood, or the warrior songs telling the warrior to "point your weapon" as the enemy charges. There are even songs to bless the children.

Throughout the Red Leaf Takoja songs, there is the underlying, very steady pulse of the "big drum", which propels the dancers and singers, and mesmerizes the listener. It's not surprising that the drum is considered the heartbeat of Grandmother Earth to the Lakota, since it truly sounds and feels like a heart beat. Overall, this DVD shows how music, song, and dance (and the drum that plays an integral part in it) is the continuing creation of Lakota culture, and, by extension, the evolution of Native American culture into the future.

Finally, in reading a couple of articles in the Folklife Annual yearbook (Smithsonian Institution, 1982) about North American pow wow culture, I learned that pow wows are sometimes an amalgamation of the traditions of the nations that attend them, since Indians from the Southeast, West, the Great Plains, and the Northeast will come to them. Overall, there seems to be an emphasis on the commonalities between the peoples--their Indian identity--and also an acknowledgement of the differences among the nations. I think this is something that the world could learn from.