The Dawnland Singers.

Overholser, Lisa

"Our old ones will be here with us as long as Earth abides...."

The Dawnland Singers released their CD Gwsintow8ganal [Honor Songs] in 2009, as a way of paying honor to people whose stories deserve telling. It is the second CD by the Dawnland Singers, a Native American performance group that was formed in 1993, when they were featured at the Abenaki Cultural Heritage Days in Vermont. The core of the group consists of Joe Bruchac, an Abenaki storyteller and author, along with his two sons Jesse Bruchac (a teacher of the Abenaki language who created the first Abenaki language website) and James Bruchac (an animal tracker who is also the director of the Ndakinna Educational Center), and Joe's sister Marge Bruchac (coordinator of the Native Studies program at University of Connecticut/Storrs Campus). All are skilled storytellers and involved in the research of traditional Native American culture, with hundreds of publications among them. Rounding out the group are John Kirk, a talented multi-instrumentalist who also helped with some of the arrangements on the CD, and Ed Lowman, bass player. Both John and Ed have become "adopted Abenakis" and are featured prominently on Honor Songs.

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Presentations by the Dawnland Singers typically include new and traditional northeastern Native music mixed with Abenaki storytelling. Shortly after coming together as a group and recording their first CD in 1994 (called Alnobak), they performed at many sites and festivals in the Northeast, including the Champlain Valley Festival, the Old Songs Festival, The Eighth Step, Caffe Lena, and Kanatsiohareke. They even opened for the Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan concert in Highgate, Vermont. As their busy lives made it more and more difficult for them to meet after their first recording, they were finally able to come together in 2009 to record this CD. The following is information taken from a phone conversation with Joe Bruchac about their project:

Honor

Gswintow8ganal, means "Honor Songs" in the Abenaki language, and the tracks pay homage to important people and events in Native American culture. As Joe Bruchac says, "We wanted to remind people of those who deserve to be honored." Such people include well-known figures like Jim Thorpe (on the ballad-like Track 6), an American athlete who was born on Indian territory in Oklahoma and was raised Sac and Fox (his native name was Wa-Tho-Huk, which translates as "Bright Path"). Thorpe attended an Indian boarding school as a youngster, and although he went on to become one of the greatest athletes of the early 20th century, he dealt with racism at a time of great prejudice towards Native Americans. Track 16, "Indian Boarding School," lyrically touches on the experiences of those at the infamous boarding schools, which were primarily focused on assimilation into the majority culture.

Some tracks honor warriors, both past and present. Track 17, "Metacomet (King Phillip)" pays respect to the 17th-century Wampanoag chief who fought British colonists in what became known as King Phillip's War, a pivotal event in New England history, while Track 9, "Wawanolet (Song for Greylock)" refers to the 18th-century chief of the Abenakis who similarly fought colonial settlers. "In Babylon," Track 3, reminds us that there are those in the present day who deserve to be honored and remembered as well, by honoring Iraq war veterans.

Language

As a language spoken by just a handful of people, Abenaki features prominently in Honor Songs as a language deserving of recognition. Says Joe: "One of the main goals of the CD was to produce good music. But we also wanted to draw attention to the language." Many of the songs, written by Joe and Jesse, are in Abenaki, and combine words and phrases from the language in combination with vocables, or syllables that have no direct translation.

Jesse, who is fluent in Abenaki, is an avid researcher and teacher of the language. In addition to compiling the only Western Abenaki online dictionary (www.westernabenaki.com), he consults on various projects. One of his current projects includes doing research on wax cylinder recordings from the Siebert collection, a collection of Algonquin texts (Abenaki is an Algonquin language). At a recent gathering of Algonquin language speakers, it was discovered that there were errors in the translations, and Jesse and others are working to provide more accurate renderings. It is evidence of their commitment to keeping the language alive, and the CD is one more way to pay respect to the language and maintain its vitality in the culture.

Music

The music on the CD is a mixture of various styles. "We wanted to create a tapestry of Native American sounds with more modern ones. It's a blending of the traditional and the modern." One track that is particularly representative of this is "Indian Boarding School" (Track 16). As Joe explains it, the song flips between the past and the present, with modern, non-Native instrumentation at the opening, but a traditional chant that comes in to represent the children at the boarding school. "Warriors in the Twilight" (Track 19) is another track that incorporates this sort of dual sonority.

Other tracks represent a more subtle blending of the traditional and modern in terms of instrumentation. The Native American flute, made out of river cane or red cedar and with only five or six finger holes, traditionally has somewhat of a background role or is used for what Joe calls "mood music." But in certain tracks on the CD, the Native American flute takes on a more lead role, as in "As Long as Earth Abides" (Track 1) or "In Babylon" (Track 3). Jesse is a versatile flute player and has expanded the boundaries of Native American flute technique by playing it more masterfully, so that it has more of a central melodic focus.

Traditionalists will also hear some clearly modern instrumentation. The two tracks mentioned above incorporate guitar, bass, and violin--all non-Native instruments played by John Kirk (who helped arrange several of the tracks) and Ed Lowman. The choice to incorporate these instrumentalists on the CD was quite purposeful. Joe puts it this way: "The CD blends together the atonality of Native American music, and the chromaticism and instrumentation of modern music."

Community

The Dawnland Singers are a tight community of musicians, but the CD effort drew upon other less visible, but equally integral, members of the community as well. Swift Eagle, a Pueblo and Apache Indian who came from a musical and silversmithing family, greatly influenced Joe as a young adult when Joe first saw him play at Frontier Town, a tourist attraction in the Adirondacks. Swift Eagle's son, Powhatan, made some of the first flutes that Joe and, later, Jesse now own. Another important influence for Joe was Maurice Dennis (Mdawelasis, or "Little Loon" is his Abenaki name), who created the Indian Village at Enchanted Forest and first taught Joe some Native American traditional songs. The creation of the CD in many ways pays respect to them as well.

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And, of course, the CD wouldn't have come into existence without the logistical means of creating it. For that, Joe and the rest of the Dawnland Singers tapped into their tightknit community of traditional music lovers, recording at the home studios of friends Donald Person (Studio 14) and Jack and Connie Hume (Windy Acres Farm). Honoring community is at the very root of Honor Songs, and in so doing, they honor the humanity of community, as well as the individual backgrounds of those that make up the community.

To contact the Dawnland Singers, visit: www. josephbruchac.com/honorsongs.html

The Dawnland Singers' CD, Gwsintow8ganal [Honor Songs] was the November 2011 featured selection in the New York Folklore Society's CD-of-the-Month Voices in New York membership program. For more information about the group, check out the New York Folklore Society's directory of traditional artists: http://www. nyfolklore.org/tradarts/music/artist/dawnland.html

To purchase Gwsintow8ganal [Honor Songs], visit the NYFS' online shop at www.nyfolklore. org/gallery/store/music.html#honor

INTERVIEW BY LISA OVERHOLSER

Lisa Overholser is staff folklorist at the New York Folklore Society, where she manages the mentoring and professional development program and contributes to many other projects and intiatives. She holds a PhD in folklore and ethnomusicology from the University of Indiana.