Search - Various Artists :: Tribal Gathering: Native American Inter-Tribal Music

Tribal Gatherings brings together music of the Navajo, Zuni, Pueblo, Cheyenne, Hopi, Kiowa, and Comanche peoples, including both formal ceremonial music and informal social songs. The music is not a re-creation or a "new music" fusion, but songs that still live in the tribal groups they represent. It is group and solo singing, drums and rattles with no attempt to modernize the music. Performers include the Jones Benally Family, one of the most important preservers of Navajo music. They contribute a gourd dance and a hoop dance, and Jones Benally performs solo a portion of a social dance used to cure the ill that is intensely beautiful. The Garcia Brothers of San Juan Pueblo perform a "basket dance" that seeks to bring "life to all living things." It is just voices and rattles. Perhaps the best-known group on this collection is the Alliance West Singers of the Kiowa tribe. They contribute two round dances, one sung in both Kiowa and English. There are also a number of elaborate ceremonial pieces, most performed at a tribal gathering in New Mexico. Fifteen pieces by nice soloists or groups prove the power of the unadulterated human voice and hand. --Louis Gibson