¡Colores!; 209; Adam McKinney, Midori, Jason Garcia

>>THIS TIME, ON COLORES! >>THIS TIME, ON COLORES! SANTA FE DANCER ADAM McKINNEY SHARES HOW GENEALOGY AND MEMORY FUEL HIS PERFORMANCE. >>What does the blood know? What do we know in our cells, in our DNA that we can't necessarily communicate on an intellectual level? >>WORLD REKNOWN VIOINIST MIDORI GIVES A SPECIAL PERFORMANCE. BROUGHT TO NEW MEXICO BY CORRALES MUSICIN SCHOOLS PROGRAM SHE SHARES HER

EXPERTISE IN A NEW "MASTER CLASS" WITH YOUNG STUDENTS. >>Music is something that I live with. It is something that has served me as a tool, it is somethingthat has served me to really get to know the world, different cultures, my own culture. It has beena way to bring people together, and it has connected me to many different communities. >>TEWA ARTIST JASON GARCIA COMBINES TRADITIONAL PUEBLO ARTFORMS WITH POP CULTURE. >>What fuels my work is looking at documenting the ever-changing cultural landscape of Santa Clara, my Pueblo. >>IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES! >>ADAM McKINNEY FINDS HEALING THROUGH DANCE. >>I engage memory and I think

of memory. What do we remember, what do we choose not to remember. How can we tell the stories of our ancestors? How do we relate the past to the present? And how will that then inform the future. For me it's about creating accurate images and telling true stories of my own experience and that of my family. My great great grandfather Jackson Davis, Born around 1870 in Mississippi. He worked as a share cropper and according to my aunties bore the family's name of his father's father. Jefferson Davis the leader of the Confederate Army. Hamapah is a really autobiographical piece of work about the process

for interviewing and storytelling and courageous conversations around the telling of that. The word Hamapah means The Map. And it symbolizes my body as being that map of the locus of trajectories of my families. In terms of the research process of Hamapah I used dance as a lens through which I looked back. I would interview family members via audio via the phone, on video. I have always been a genealogist. I've wanted to know who everyone was in my family and how they were related to me. My grandmother Kora B. Atris Daily was a published poet she was born 1918 and had 9 children in Hamapah I use dance, theater and multimedia to tell my own experience as a mixed heritage person

I feel like this conversation around mixed heritage identity isn't often represented in media. And she ran north away from my grandfather... >>Bellamy: What does it feel like? >>McKinney: For me it's freeing, it's opening the places of the dialogue where we haven't been yet as a culture and as a society. I try not to necessarily portray trauma on stage. I feel like we have enough trauma in our lives but rather coming from a place of liberation. Doing the healing work going through that place. In Hamapah there's a video of that door

of no return in Elmina Castle in Ghana and what do we as people have to go through what are the doors that we must go through to open upthis conversation. In terms of what it feels like it feels like a healing. It feels like I'm coming home to my own body. To the locus of the embodiment of my ancestors. In doing my genealogical work I'm finding and understanding better historical perspectives of Racism and how Racism has affectedmy ancestors' lives. >>Bellamy: Why dance to tell that story? >>McKinney: I have a body. I'm looking toward civil Rights movements and certainly what we see in terms of sit ins

and people using their bodies to come together toward finding some kind of reconciliation. So for me finding change means going inside my body and connecting it with other bodies. A question that we often ask audiences after Hamapah is what does the blood know? What do we know in ourselves, in our DNA that we can't necessary communicate on an intellectual level. For example in oneof the last sections I sing a song and I don't finish the song. I create a blockage and I don't know why I created that in the creative process. (singing)and then after

the performance, after I'de premiered the performance, my mother communicated to me that my grandfather sang that song to her and recorded it on a record but at the end it cut off. I think about how my ancestors moved. I hear their voices I have some of them on a recording and I think of the ways that they might have moved whether it was a large trajectory of space and time or if it was from here to the refrigerator. How might that then inform my own physical body in performance? So for me it really is around memory and not just in this intellectual space. >>Bellamy: But with the body? >>McKinney: But in this embodied place. How might my own body remember the Atlantic slave trade because it's still inside my cellular structure. And how might dance then be a healing

and be a break in terms of the internalization of the structures of oppression. >>Bellamy: What's the power of art? >>McKinney: For me the power of art is around remembering that we're not alone. It's about coming together. It's about asking the question of why we are the way we are how we've ended up and how we can move forward. I want everyone to have access to resources. Whether that be monetary or food or health. And how can art move that conversation forward. It's about creating beauty and beauty out of stories but it's also about this important social justice conversation for me, around

making people's lives better. So for me the power of art is remembering and moving forward. >>MIDORI SHARES HOW MUSIC IS MUCH MORE THAN THE NOTES OR THE INSTRUMENT. [applause] >>HB: Do you still get nervous when you perform? >>Midori: I absolutely love being onstage, and I've been years, and there is this pang of excitement every time I walk out onstage. >>HB: What do you love about music? >>Midori: Music is something that I live with. It is something that has served me as a tool, it is something that has served me to really

get to know the world, different cultures, my own culture. It has been a way to bring people together, and it has connected me to many different communities. And its something very difficult to describe with words, but it's also something that lives inside my heart. >>HB: How do you overcome the challenges of playing music that's so well-known and so challenging? >>Midori: I'm stimulated and inspired by the process

of learning, of going deep inside the music. Trying to get behind the scenes, so to say, by getting to know the composer. We learn so much about the composer, himself or herself, through the music that he or she has left for us and they way the score is marked and the style, the language in which this composer writes. These are all very inspiring, very invigorating processes to go through for an interpreter. Marisa Grandados: She came and performed in Albuquerque when I was six years old and I just rememberthe entire concert I was just watching her so intently and she was such an amazing player and she would show her emotion on her face, how much she loved the music and how each note was played with such

wanted to be like her. >>HB: How did you really grow your talent? >>Midori: Well, you know, I think learning music of course is very beneficial in many different ways. But many different things also benefit musical learning. It's not just the technical skills, but it's the interpretive skill, it's partly how you conceive the world around you, it's what goes on inside yourself and how you interpret what that is. And it's also a skill training of seeing what it ison the score and hearing what it is in the music. It's not possible to say, really, in a simple sentence how does one practice. Yes, one practices an instrument, but that's not the end of the story for learning music. One has to cultivate one's mind, serve the curiosity. >>Gwen Prior: She related

phrasing music to like a book. And she said that punctuation was like a little phrase, but like the period is the end anything in between is decoration. >>HB: What are your feelings for students through the arts, specifically withyour work in partners and performance? >>Midori: What I love to do is to explore music with young people. Bringing people together, young people in particular, together through music so that we can discuss; and from discussion we can understand each other better and we can hope for a better world. >>Gwen Prior: I like being able to play the same piece as someone else, and we all breathe together and we all play the same music but we're making it for someone else to listen to, and all the hard work that we put into little tiny things that maybe someone else wouldn't notice, but it does make a big difference to us and that's a big deal. >>HB: What does it feel like when you're working with younger musicians?

>>Midori: I very much enjoy any opportunity I get to work with young musicians, and exchanging ideasand trying to see what it is that they could actually do to get closer to their goal. And it's always inspiring because of the energy that they put in, the dedication, the commitment. And despite thestruggles we all have in learning to play an instrument or learning to play a piece, I see that they keep working very, very hard. And that's always very energizing for me. because I can be challenged by it, and so I'm doing work to like overcome what challenges me and then get better. >>Midori: I think what it is is that everyone comes to music from such different perspectives. And each piece is in each player's hands a different work. The interpretation really is

special and unique for each one. And to be working with young people, with their interpretation, and trying to hone in and sharpen their interpretive skills, that is something very interesting. >>Marisa Grandados: It feels like I'm free, and there's just so many different ways to do stuff. Youcan play it in one way, or in a completely different way, but wither way it's free and nobody's going to tell you that it's wrong. >>Midori: I have been involved, I think, in educational work for I think as long as I can remember. It has been a long time. And to me, it's not something separate from what I do as a performer. It might be the case that the outside world might separate the teaching and the performing, but for me it's very interrelated. It is who I am as a person. >>Esther Han: Music just >>Gwen Prior: Music is just an escape from things, and it

helps you kind of breathe a little bit more and its helps you be a better person, I think. >>HB: What fuels the creativity and the love you have for the music? >>Midori: I think it's partly chemistry. I just love it, and when you love something then trying to explain it is only rationalizing it or trying to rationalize it. And I don't know if that's going todo any justice actually. My students often inspire me. I think the music itself inspires me. [music plays] >>SANTA CLARA PUEBLO'S JASON

GARCIA DOCUMENTS THE CHANGING CULTURAL LANDSCAPE. Jason Garcia, and I also go by the name Okuu pin which translates to turtle mountain. Which is also represents Sandia Mountains that are located in the East of Albuquerque; I'm from the pueblo of Santa Clara and also which the traditional Tewa name for that is Kha'Po Owinge which means rose path.

What fuels my work is looking at, documenting the ever-changing cultural landscape of Santa Clara, my pueblo. Hearing the language Tewa being spoken, of being surrounded by visual landmarks, mountains, hills, valleys, streams, digging for clay, looking for more mineral pigments for my work, experimentation, my children, asking them what their thoughts of what certain items should be placed in my work. >>Hakim: Was the Pikachu their idea? Something they said they want that in the work. >> Jason Garcia: Yeah exactly, or you know there's the story of the little girl with the thought bubble, she had a bowl of beans but the title of the piece is 'beans again?' and I said what do you think the little girl

is thinking about? In terms what do you think she wants to eat? And they said "Pizza Hut". [Music Plays] >>Hakim: Jason, your work points to the link between historical memory contemporary constructions why is that an important piece of your work? >>Jason Garcia: I think its important to tie the two and see how the history of my own Tewa culture,participation in Tewa ceremonies and Santa Clara ceremonies and life relates to the present of being a Pueblo Indian living in the 21st century. >>Hakim: How do you see your work as documentation? >>Jason Garcia: One of my influences was the late Pablita Velarde of Santa Clara Pueblo; she was a painter of the Santa Fe Indian Studio.

Pablita was documenting that the pueblo was changing but then also seeing how she was seeing how the pueblo was able to maintain its cultural traditions, its cultural identity. So for my own self I'm doing the same thing documenting the ever-changing cultural landscape of Santa Clara Pueblo showing television, cell phones, gambling, different social problems coming into the pueblo. >>How that's changing certain lifestyles of the pueblo. We're still maintaining our cultural identity, our ceremony, our language is still there. [Music Plays] >>I grew up in a very artistic environment in Santa Clara

Pueblo, my maternal and paternal grandparents were both potters, so I would go to my maternal grandmothers house after school and my aunts andmy mother would be working on pottery. >>So seeing them creating pottery, mixing mud always wanting to have a hand in it and always wantingto create and always wanting to do something. At that time they'd be decorating their pottery with different pueblo iconography, and you know being 5, 6 years old I didn't necessarily understand the symbology, so I would usually create something that I was more familiar with which was Star Wars or Spiderman or Darth Vader. So this was something that was the visual language that I understood. >>Hakim: Things that found themselves on the pueblo. >>Jason Garcia: Exactly,

and growing up with MTV and growing up with cable television in the home you know, I was always immersed in popular culture. >>Hakim: So you talk about these stories for the future what are some of these stories that you wantto get across to children or to you? >>Jason Garcia: I think some of the stories the Tewa tales of Suspense is a body of work that uses Tewa historical events pueblo historical events like the pueblo revolt or the colonization of New Mexico and its impact on the Tewa people of that time. And it's using comic book covers in order to tell that story. >>Jason Garcia: Another body of work that I have is

the Corn Maiden series which shows technologies influence on 21st century pueblo culture, it shows pueblo people maintaining a distinct identity butit also shows influence like technology, like the satellite dishes or the TV antennas or cellphones. >>Jason Garcia: The cell phone and the satellite receiver and transmitter much like our prayers and songs are, they describe how clouds form how lighting travels, you know like our prayers, incantations for rain and were receiving and sending that message between the earth, the world where we're at,the plazas and sending out that signal to the universe. So in that sense it's an exposition of technology of that medium between two worlds. And then also the symbol of technology

represents Saint Clara of Assisi our patron saint which we celebrate on August 12th so that symbol of the television, the satellite dish marks a place of Santa Clara Pueblo of Kha'p'oo Owinge. >>Hakim: As an artist what do you think your job is? What do you think your role is? >>I think as an artist my role is to tell a story of who I am and who my people are, telling those stories that need to be told that need to be shared, of maintaining that history that's tied to the past, so that we can continue