Forum; Joy Harjo: Native American Poet and Musician

from the longhorn radio network the university of texas at austin this is for him first divided into their forty or the musician joy harjo native american poet and musician speaks of cultural impressions that impacted her choice is being a poet that was nobody in my community that i could point out and say he was a poet now especially not know women that night even any man known anybody in the community especially indian people that you know made a living as poets not there and many people do make a living as poets yeah yeah she

says this is all in the music it's like poetic justice the poet is formed guest joe harjo a native american from oklahoma who has become an international performer his heart just latest tractors combines various kinds of world music and indigenous poetry to form a collection she has titled letter from the end of the twentieth century from the silverware records label ms hunter agreed ruling two weeks i knew people who saying you never for a living fulltime most people you know where women were often homemakers where they did work my mother was one of the few women who worked she worked as

you know she worked as a waitress she worked as a cook sometimes two and three jobs in the un and she liked saying but you know there were you know as far as somebody being a poe it wasn't until i was in my i liked poetry i liked some things i read even though i always had to go through this you know i like the sound that i always had the concept to poetry came out of a new england area or in england or europe and it wasn't until i met nineteen seventy even one when i heard that poetry of any kind of a wave of enemy of writers so african american writers and the whole the floating can't kill movement where there were huge gatherings and it came and went to one here years ago huge gatherings involve many different people's reading poetry doing music in hand he's the cultural events it was when i first heard it i think it's i'm an ortiz an indian writer and then

lastly silicone read and heard that the writing is when something when often may i want i can write it's possible to write and to make a poetry that has relevance to work it to my particular existence so there was no oral tradition in your community and you are you do you call a poetry and you might try there's poetry with music you know it's it's you know that song you know you're an even separate get some much from that often and you know in the public school system and i you know grew up in tulsa a whistle you know there were poetry was associated and writing was associated with books you know there is an oral tradition own terms of people telling stories and and that you know an end but not you know there wasn't for say a poetry tradition

except in the sun kind of more about the history tradition possibly can are you speaking specifically of your own region in oklahoma or was just true in native american communities over and well i'm speaking for myself and what i know in i mean i'm only i know that it's possible you know in my trial you can have there's many many different experiences many many different human's even in the same family people can have a very different experience and i know that i remember talking to a relative of mine and he was you know he grew up within you know his parents as parents or medicine people and they you know infuse him in the language and you know he grew up inside that and we'd do you know we talk a lot about i learned a lot from him and you know and i don't see an idea to meet you know we learn a lot from each other thing

an you know and that's a blessing and it's a blessing to have that and to have both i interrupted a family that was you know there's alcoholism have been you know i was one of those kids that you know there was a carrier people love each other despite the difficulties but people were you know it's like a lot of these children go through these days people are so busy working you know putting all their energy out to even gm to bring an end to make a living that it's you can lose them especially when people go off to a city and they lose that network they can lose a network of community and isolated from the community and from you know those connections i think that's why we see a lot of these problems and it and i've also seen children who were you know going through those struggles be really changed by poetry two and ten

candidates will recognize things that group characteristic troubles and i think so i think so i think one way i knew that it was working as a very moved you to see any do you work and you know you do it because you love it and it's hard it's not always easy some days it's horrible sundays he wonders you know you just keep going i mean i've been doing this for a long time and i don't think any more talented than most people i think i'm stubborn and i'm also pretty disciplined i learned you know i have a certain wildness that comes out that there's also a discipline you're saying they recognize that yes i reserve reading recently up in portland and there is a young man i am i admired him he's very much a stone from one of the northern tribes one of the northern plains and he's always very respectful and i can tell that he really he's very he's got that you know he's like when the old people that he's very young he's young but

he's got those where you can see it in him he came up after reading and very pointedly said you can't touch anyone to talk to me and he thanked me and said it my performance as i was doing i played my horn and some talk to read the city and it sounded like grandparents you know like in the way that they would do things a really and i've heard you know that i have it is it does come through i think if you really get into your art you as a human have to put your time into it you have to put your your energy into it but as more and more you get into it the more and more you realize that you're part of some larger force and it comes through you yes you know you add your own little flavor you and your own history to it you add your own imprint and it's not you realize is that you because you realize that you're acting out of many generations

and you realize that and i have more and more respect for it because it's something so large and so in the skin so beautiful and i'm just at a human you know being i'm charged for whatever reason i think it's because i really needed what poetry had to give me be as i know how to listen in ohio was in graceful it all and i was one of these people that you know the poetry just tickets hansen angry i have to as much as we don't take allen i think are going to have to take that went on because she needs to learn she needs to learn poetry but the more you do it the more you realize that it is you know you're not working by yourself when did you reach a point where you wanted to work with a larger group how did you form for and poetic justice can add that to your message yet owl i went to a lawyer on that because why boys love music and i wanted to take piano as a child that you didn't have a piano

and you know with the idea of lessons we really couldn't afford lessons nora piano and then i remember in i think it was the fifth and sixth grade i took clarinet not that intuitive lesson citizen when it make one tweak its goal and that i didn't take any more than that was you know years ago and when i wrote like so my earliest influences and musical and i knew all along in an idea to vary the you know poetry is you know is that it's often what would set me off and paul was listening to a phrase you know it had to do with the rhythm certain rhythm a certain sound like it here and i was in my mid thirties when i picked up his first is a tenor sax started and i had somebody wrote me out the deeply scale and that's when i started playing on and i know people and then i started by the fool around with it and then probably about

six years ago i started the band about five years ago six years ago and that's serious six or seven years ago and it's curious started really practicing really working on it because i love the sound of the horn and i get a soprano sax and when a time it jim pepper liked him a really fine horn player creek same trend is my father his mother isn't car and he was like a brother to me and here he was wonderful have a few lessons with him you know to get lessons were traveling away and just started and i know it was not supportive in this effort everybody thought i was losing my mind says you know look this is even you know one of my closest colleagues had my translator in italian i have three and getting me and my third book published in italian and she says you know and she's always she sort of like a watch dog she will go in on which you know she's a guard says she's like a guardian of my poetry because you'll hear she loves it fiercely

and sees where it is and she says you know this decisive conferences distracting you can and you can't my skin is getting in your way you need to write and i read that he asked an especially people when i was first playing in night in a town that is like you know what you're doing but i could you know it's a huge and sometimes signed demus year here so i knew it was possible and really it's in the difficulties i can't play and then do the voice at the same time which is hard at work with and i kept it up and like i said i know there's more talent and i have a long ways to go with it but it is it would help is about a year and half two years ago my friend pointed toe the value is saying you know you're doing you know forget this came to a performance we can choose in the state and after the performance she had tears in her eyes after that she supported it and even helped us get a performance we played in rome the

summer vacation moment was really wonderful do you compose for your instrument do you improvise john williams is the honda has been the major musical ranger and now an item an icon the cd year for cd the letter a letter from in the twentieth century we all kind of worked on taney things that mean creative team is john williamson a sister susan williams was the drummer in myself and then most my horn lines on that first one he think he did a few but i did not you know i did my horn lines in which allied came out of improvising and sometimes we improvise and then we're working on new stuff down until i'm doing and i'm being more active in that career ranging an unlikely were working only the tapes back and forth to work on things it's in on learning piano to stay for my ear in and keep practicing is you're putting together something is there a

natural flow from the spoken word into the music that actually there is no new i think there's something about the tone of my voice that's similar to the tone of the saxophone and i play alto and soprano and there's a similarity in that that i think helped to go from one to the other any music or senate so they can make so we have this color tribal jazz reggae poetic rock but the music cuz when with the words to feel i did a grand experiment i really failed i think that it was useful i really wanted to play i had been playing right before i started this band and i was looking at to sign it get together with this guy keith wonderful wonderful creative person of great guitarist who played keyboard on hand i see i really wanna play it on a plane so we started

when particles show and his most of his tethers like alternative rock and there's nothing like standing on stage and realizing that we're doing is not working you know i mean any and he's fine and violence is getting my legs as they go now you know we found the right kind of the right thing to fill which is you know really influence from on my tribe other tribes are several tribes represented in the band and the ripple traveled we'd listen to a lot of african african american music you know like reggae for instance does really eternal clan music that has a similar main thing i think is different for us there they're influenced by their indigenous groups out of jamaica as well as african influences in european slight jazz which i love given all this

diversity of reddened and styles is their diversity of us politics and issues that you talk about word do you have the more central message despite the background i think it's a universal that it gets very specific in some of the tunes like the one that the crowd noise laws for an unnamed it's an honor to really honor song on her porch where a young woman who was murdered because of her work in on behalf of indian communities so one of the songs is about her another song is about the birth of a child but it also they'll have dimensions i mean they're very the lyrics i think they're often placed in the landscape but the news and you know they cross at mit's my tendency in my poetry ways to cross time back and forth so i guess it is another your message that

people always come away they always come up and say it's changed them or changes them we have won the trapeze to get rid of fear useful so useful thing that might be it do you feel that there's any any repetition of mali or more tvs had to work with you know i've noticed i think everybody has probably a certain area that they've tended fall clothes too because it's part of soul a few notes i mean you go off and you know if you learn you're the trader you want to keep variety you're interested in

making a piece of cohere you know shape the state coherent and beautiful as well as the neon you know he liked to provoke interest but i've noticed that just about every player on a player there's always a certain place that's like the heart home court to hear here when you travel play music whether it's in this country or in others do you feel like your reception is the same are you comfortable with what we feel people are getting out of your music regardless new york yeah me even when the beginning in the beginning was just the surrealist john sue and i remember our first gay and as henderson really been playing together for a few months just three of us and i ended on my horn that long and incidentally turns on time john had been steadily climbing and i remember it

you know i look back and just horrified that we played in public that you know we get a standing ovation going to the way god made it people tend to relay it said something i think there's something larger than us that worked through it and returned again a really really good response i think the most frustrating gate was we played we played in my played and when we played in germany we played at this and jazz club in and the lights it's cold club speed and i remember i was up speaking and it was more at ease tensions in eastern germany and more western germany and everybody'll most people at least a kind of those kind of events know english so you can talk and you know that's generally a lot of it's getting through interpreter her center provides hope for her to have a working journalist hopeful or whatever language and i knew that

it was there is low first came because i speak urdu speaking in between and most of the audience didn't understand english and the lyrics are importance music in the city and we have an interpreter i can have an interpreter well are playing and doing the stuff that the interpreter them for their interactions and that's frustrating because i felt like we can you know get through it you are eating and they like the music and they were head into it that it didn't have the same impact as it would have had they known the lyrics to people who knew the virtual ticket you know that a higher percentage of people didn't understand english you know whether any trouble language use the truth of her performed by a man there's one that i'm getting translated into my own language on a well on a translator myself and we're going to perform in this country

is it important to you to do more offenders has just kind of an experiment at my work right now well and try and learning my language now know it by you know i had something i'm learning and taking out i know some navajo language from being out in the southwest i grew up in tulsa oklahoma and then was sent to indian boarding school for high school in santa fe new mexico so i've lived in known theoretical was to my life and the tight unison am i stayed in interest and when people do speak spanish and critical at a little known do you have in a latin rhythms and you definitely trends sauterne you know it's the latin rhythms that we incorporated there is the instrumentation that you use always work with all of these different kinds of

rhythms i think that the choices that you've named reggae and others how would put pressure on just what kind of instruments you select i wouldn't be able to do it i do some other arrangements in which we use in our work and you see do you use everybody on every tune that i like to work some arrangements that very that then i also just got an electronic wind instrument so i can play cello wanted to or other things i've always wanted to do a piece for cello but you haven't heard strings yet known i've got enough to do my life and right now it's all you know i've been concentrating on horror and that i can police trainees the other have you know i'm at instrument how do you distribute your music house and available and who makes available to the rest silver wave our last cd is out from silver wave records and its tower

records they get major distribution we did at first we did the first pressing ourselves as red horses records and released it out we played at the olympics we're invited for the cultural olympiad in atlanta and that's for me really staton it's elbows pretty quickly first round and then silver wave peaked today are you on chart you'll get airplay we've been getting airplay we get airplay leaving your journey get more more airplay but the way commercial radio's formatted it must be hard for you to fit some of their tryst with yeah i think so but i think that i think we've got something that's new and that's different i think it has a place i think that i think about what have been yelling with rap and rappers came on they didn't know what to do with that either and this is kind of a new thing i think it's poetry announcement some of the signs and kind of half singing and before you just read and nine and move

and melodic up i have a melodic kind of reading from a style anyway and then i'm starting to sing more or what i call saying do your poems where spoken portions tend to be what tone pictures or the narration to talk summer narration some aren't so what kind of variation do you choose one has the story now is that the nra ratings are as poetic even mine nair more hymn book of essays right now and even those are pulling the meaning more figurative language then than simply something present here but one of the title cut in water from one of the twentieth century is that probably the most narrative piece about riding in a

taxi with a guy from the west africa and to the airport in a plant through gun violence in america and knows a whole narrative that unfolds with them do your pieces offer a solution to expand an answer very to just explore the question of detailed open the door but you know i'm just exploring enough anybody has any one answer i think did you hear it and the truth is actually we have standing in the taters i heard one guy just for a cd and i thought ok i can hear is here i could hear him trying to do you know joy harjo and poetic justice thing

and other native poet i know ft science started his own band in owosso but i can hear a note leithead imitators of poetry for a while but the music thing to hear people are starting to do that as you widen your audience do you find yourself getting away from that original tribal community unit that you reached an hour now the thing that i like about our audience is is that we had you know there's a korean the audience and use its blue tab it seems to reach a lot of different ages you know you get even you know the older people and the kids teenagers like somebody reaching across a broad spectrum everyday

we murder against some form it's been joy harjo poet musician and founder of the group poetic justice that music heard during her interview is from their latest compact disc letter from the end of the twentieth century on the silver wave records label the views expressed on this program do not necessarily reflect the views of the university of texas at austin or this station technical producer for four cliff hargrove production assistant benes it i'm your producer and host olive green is available and navy purchased by writing for and cassettes communication giving the ut austin austin texas seventy seven one to that's for a cassettes communication between the ut

austin austin texas seventy seven wanted to this exchange at the university of texas at austin this is the longhorn radio network