showcasing the sights and sounds of the Lakota Music Project,” writes Tessa Thomas at TV station KEVN Black Hills FOX (Rapid City, South Dakota) on Monday (10/13). In October the state of South Dakota celebrates Native Americans’ Day rather than Columbus Day. “South Dakota Symphony Orchestra music director Delta David Gier says, ‘The adjective that’s been most often used to describe the Lakota Music Project is healing.’ The Lakota Music Project was started in 2009, with the idea to make music with Lakota musicians…. Gier says, ‘To create cultural understanding, it’s much more constructive to focus on the things that we love rather than our differences, and the music has the power to do that because we all love music so much, it’s so much a part of who we are. So when you share that and share it from the heart with each other, there’s an instant kind of community that’s created.’ ” At its website, the SDSO notes that the two-hour Lakota Music Project concert “uses the South Dakota Symphony Chamber Orchestra and the Creekside Singers (a Lakota drumming group) in a side-by-side setting devised to promote a deeper understanding of these two different, but coexisting cultures, and demonstrate the value of peaceful, positive collaboration.”
Posted October 15, 2014
