Joy
8/31/10
I THINK I LOVE YOU, AN ALL NIGHT ROUND DANCE
I'm writing to introduce you to my new project: I Think I Love You, An All Night Round Dance. I am excited about this project because it pulls together theater, music and dance in an innovative manner. I am inspired by Greek theater, a stomp dance/funk musical meld, and want to explore romantic love against the backdrop of indigenous freedom movements.
I want to start work on this new piece of indigenous musical theater this fall, but I need your help.
To learn more about the project and how you can be a part of it please click on the link.
http://projectsite.unitedstatesartists.org/project/i_think_i_love_you_an_all_night_round_dance
I am excited to be part of this new project site by United States Artists to assist artists in funding for their projects.
Thank you for taking a look.
Joy
8/16/10
Roots and Rhythm Festival Aug. 19
Joy Harjo & The Arrow Dynamics
August 19, 2010
9-10 pm
ROOTS AND RHYTHMS FESTIVAL
in The Blue Tower Lounge
Part of The Native American & Indigenous Performing Arts Festival at the beautiful Buffalo Thunder Resort & Casino!
877.848.6337
http://www.buffalothunderresort.com
FREE/4 Days/20 + Performing Artists
More Information:
http://www.emergenceproductions.com/
Location:
Buffalo Thunder Resort & Casino
30 Buffalo Thunder Trail
Santa Fe, NM 87506
Buffalo Thunder Resort & Casino is conveniently located just 15 minutes north of the Santa Fe Plaza, 60 minutes south of Taos, and 75 minutes north of Albuquerque. Just take exit #177, Buffalo Thunder Road off highway 84/285.
The spirit of a play is bothering me. This spirit has been sending me songs, scenes, and characters and I can hardly wait to see where it will take me.
I THINK I LOVE YOU, An All Night Round Dance
http://projectsite.unitedstatesartists.org/project/i_think_i_love_you_an_all_night_round_dance
I am looking for funds to complete a first draft of an original musical play, including three original tunes, and sessions with premier dramaturge Shirley Fishman. She’s been called the “heart and soul” of La Jolla Playhouse. She was the heart and soul assisting me with my first production, Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light. These funds will also go toward a reading/performance at the Public Theater in New York.
Al Green sings, “Love will make you do right, love will make you do wrong. Love will make you stay out all night long.” It is love that motivates us, makes this circle called Earth go round and round. This holds true with a circle of friends who came together during Indian school, at the height of indigenous freedom movements and now come together for an all night wake for their friend who has died at the hand of her lover, in a double suicide. Many stories emerge, collide, provoke, and reveal the intimate interconnections and secretsthat haunt the wake party. The music interweaving the tale is original funky, tribal, rock, stomp dance mix. A chorus of ex-lovers who are part of the band will also tell what can’t be told, in the manner of a Greek chorus.
8/8/10
Your Chance....
I am in the middle of my "memoir", which is basically moments of transformation--
is there anything you want to know or may want me to address?
8/7/10
MNN Column for June 2010
Living in hotels and the city is getting to me. Last night I stayed at the home of my music producer, Larry Mitchell, because we went late in the music studio. He and his wife rent a home out in the hills west of Santa Fe. I went out into the morning on the back patio, to the realm of the sun, earth, birds, lizards, and pinon and cedar trees. I heard: quiet. And in the quiet you can hear your heart, the earth’s heart, the sun’s heart, and the sound of the direction of your life as it merges with the whole of life. I learned as much out there this morning as I can in a book, or a whole library of books. I saw and heard what I needed to know as I headed back into the other part of the story.
These days it’s a tough story. The results of our desecration are all around us. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are being choked by oil greed. We are literally the Earth’s body, so we humans are intimately feeling and knowing the effects of these Earth changes. Storms are many times stronger, as are the winds. A few weeks ago in New York City, as I came out of the National Museum of the American Indian, after being part of a native playwrights panel, the winds were so strong they lifted me up and pushed me against the Battery Park fence. They were relentless and powerful. I dreamed about them several years ago: how the winds would move like a tsunami over Earth, to remake the Earth. So it’s no wonder that many among us are developing cancers, strokes, heart, various body failures and emotional challenge and breakdown. We are the Earth.
This country is in a downturn of the cycle. It’s an important part of the story, but difficult to weather if we don’t keep the perspective of eternity. That’s how the wisest always position their perspective. It’s like looking from the Moon, or from past the point of your departure from this place, or with seven generations in mind. We have to keep moving with grace, strength and humor and know that our native ways are what are going to help us make it through the destruction. You watch, the same people who are championing English only, immigration fences, and the dissolution of our tribal nations will be coming to us to know how to live. We have to be ready.
So, this morning, I call my mother, who lives in Tulsa, to see how she’s doing. It turns out that my brother, who loves to gamble at casinos with his Choctaw wife, has given my mother a new reason to continue her forays to the Cherokee and Creek casinos. He reminded her that she gets lots of exercise walking around the casino. Now she has a new reason to go, much to the dismay of my sister who is on a constant campaign to keep my mother from spending down her money on the machines.
Last month I gave a performance of a new show at the New Mexico Jazz Workshop: “We Were There When Jazz Was Invented”. The highlight for me was stomp dancing with Gary White Deer, Valerie Harjo and Willie George as part of the show, to prove that our tribal people were part of the origins of the American musical forms of blues, jazz and rock. When you hear all the music together, there is no doubt our Mvskoke culture was left out of the equation. Everyone loved Gary’s troupe’s performance, and my spirit was happy hanging out and getting to know Gary, Valerie and Willie better. Being with them reminded me: I need to go home.
Yes, I need to go home.
Catch up, RED DREAMS Offer, and Here we go--
I haven't written on the blog for awhile. I've gone over to Facebook. FB feels responsive, live and quick--a wiley creature.
This morning, though I've decided I will keep this up--make some links.
I'm in the middle of writing a "memoir" with a deadline of the end of this month. So that's where I'm focused. And if you stay tuned I might post some excerpts.
I just released a new CD of music: RED DREAMS, A TRAIL BEYOND TEARS. It the album I produced to acknowledge traditional music.
AND I will make the same offer here that I made on Facebook:
Until August 17th, if you buy my new CD of instrumental flute music RED DREAMS, A TRAIL BEYOND TEARS from my website, using Paypal, directly from me, I will give you a copy of either the classic Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century or Native Joy for Real.
Only ten days left on the offer. I also made the offer that if you get me an interview, a review or distribution I will send you a free CD. And, if you turn me onto a gig that works out, I will give you a complete set of my music CD's. I have gotten some great responses.
See you.
7/23/10
Roots and Rhythms Festival
ROOTS AND RHYTHMS FESTIVAL
Joy Harjo & The Arrow Dynamics
*Actual time and date To Be Announced
August 19-22 2010
20 + Performing Artists
4 Days
FREE
Buffalo Thunder Resort & Casino proudly presents
the prestigious
Native American & Indigenous Performing Arts Festival
the 15th Annual Roots & Rhythms on August 19, 20, 21, 22, 2010!
At the beautiful Buffalo Thunder Resort & Casino!
More Information
Location: Buffalo Thunder Resort & Casino is conveniently located just 15 minutes north of the Santa Fe Plaza, 60 minutes south of Taos,
and 75 minutes north of Albuquerque. Just take exit #177, Buffalo Thunder Road off highway 84/285.
Buffalo Thunder Resort & Casino
30 Buffalo Thunder Trail Santa Fe, NM 87506
877.THUNDER (877.848.6337)
5/28/10
Muskogee Nation News Column April 2010
It is supposed to be spring. It’s trying to be spring. I wake up this morning to freezing temperatures, and it’s almost April in New Mexico. I remember Oklahoma springs in childhood. I felt like a small plant and knew myself as part of the earth. I’d get up before anyone else. I liked smell of the medicine of plants, and felt the snakes, earthworms, horned toads sliding and walking about, including the mole who lived in the yard moving through the earth. In those times, robins came only in the spring. Our backyard was full of poison ivy. We had to be careful, especially our sister. She was highly allergic to it. Mostly it didn’t bother me. The front was carpeted in clover patches and dandelions. I knew these plants intimately and practically lived in them in the spring and summer. I knew June bugs, roly-poly bugs, and played with them.
I liked getting up when the sun got up. The breaking of dawn was my time to just be, without the worry or pressure of any family drama. I liked being with thoughts that were fed by the sun, by the trees, plants and the creatures. I usually had a dog. They always followed me home. When I was five, I had a dog I named “Alligator”. I’ve always had a fondness for alligators, some kind of connection I don’t totally understand. It isn’t my clan. My clan through my father is Katcv, or Tiger clan. I don’t know my mother’s Cherokee clan, even though her mother was raised Cherokee near Moody, Oklahoma.
I knew the bees and played with them as freely as I played with the garter snakes, horned toads, and the other creatures. I’d play house. I’d catch the bees, hold them in my hands, and set them where I wanted them. They didn’t mind me handling them as long as they could get on with their business. They had a tender mind toward me as a young one.
One day I was out playing in the late morning. My mother and her friends were sitting out on the porch, drinking iced tea, smoking cigarettes and telling stories. Usually the stories ran along the lines of who came home and who didn’t come home, and all the drama going on among them and their families. My mother was also writing songs at that time. She was still at home and didn’t have to work yet. Her best friend was another Cherokee woman who lived across the street. I liked hearing them talk, their presence there. I adored my mother. She was beautiful, dynamic, and loved to sing.
As they talked I continued my play in the clover. I caught bees as I often did and played with them. My mother and her friend saw me. I can still see my mother’s concerned expression and hear her alarmed voice, “You’ll get stung!” It was then the bee stung me. I felt betrayed and confused by the situation. I didn’t pick up bees again for years.
****
I’m a bit road weary this morning. Just returned from Andover, Massachusetts and Huron, Ohio. What stands out about this trip is that in each place an indigenous person of those lands welcomed me. In Andover, Annawon Weeden, a beautiful, young Mashpee Wampanoag man sang a welcome before my show. In Huron, Bruce V. Molnar who is vice chairman of the Pokagan Band Gaming Commission a member of the Pokagan Nation came to my first event and welcomed me, in the Muscogee language! This made a huge difference in the energy of the transaction. A performance is not just the performer: it’s the audience, the performer, the original keepers of the land, the place, and what has happened and what is going on there.
****
And finally, my brother still doesn’t have his CDIB or his tribal citizenship card. My sister drove my brother to Oklahoma City to get the change on his birth certificate. Our father was a “Jr.”. It appears on one document and not the other. They learned to do so will require a court order. Nathan and the staff have been helpful. The bureaucracy is hell. I guess we’ve been fully colonized.
5/26/10
June: Concerts, Wings of Night Sky-Wings of Morning Light, and Workshops
12th FESTIVAL OF NEW PLAYS
June 5, 2010 8 pm
Theodore and Adele Shank Theatre
Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light
BY JOY HARJO
DIRECTED BY RANDY REINHOLZ
Following its successful world premiere with Native Voices last year, Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light returns for a special one-night engagement at the La Jolla Playhouse, starring the incomparable Joy Harjo, who is accompanied by Grammy Award-winning producer and guitarist Larry Mitchell.
*Find out more about the Play: http://www.joyharjo.com/Wings.html
_____________
Duende Poetry Series 2010 Special Event
June 13, 2010 3-5 pm
Featuring Joy Harjo on poetry, sax, flute, Larry Mitchell on guitar, synth pads, and John Rangel on keyboards. Free
Location: http://anasazifieldswinery.com/contact.htm
_____________
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