new cosmologies
instrumentation | flexible ensemble; cl./rec. vln. vlc. pno.
date | 2020
duration | c. 8'
premiere | September 1st, 2020 by Music at Copland House ensemble @ Kaufman Center, NYC for the CULTIVATE festival
note | I see fundamental connections between the improvisatory and interpretative processes in my music and the formation of new, imagined histories of indigenous peoples. I think violence lives in our bones and our blood and that we still feel remnants from the first settlers to murder and poison our ancestors. Imagining a future for us means imagining a past separate from the settler colonialism that killed so many of our mythologies and stories.
When I think about Steve Mackey's piece Indigenous Instruments, I think about the power of a white man's imagination. The power of being able to conjure into being a New Indigenous peoples, not ravaged by genocide. I imagine the power of being celebrated, featured, and written about for it. Perhaps it's just a small piece in the scheme of things, but I can't shake how much that piece radicalized me to tell my own stories, to imagine new pasts and futures, and to fundamentally understand that white people gain their power from stealing our traditions and knowledges, our proximity to the divine, the cosmological, and the truth.
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date | 2020
duration | c. 8'
premiere | September 1st, 2020 by Music at Copland House ensemble @ Kaufman Center, NYC for the CULTIVATE festival
note | I see fundamental connections between the improvisatory and interpretative processes in my music and the formation of new, imagined histories of indigenous peoples. I think violence lives in our bones and our blood and that we still feel remnants from the first settlers to murder and poison our ancestors. Imagining a future for us means imagining a past separate from the settler colonialism that killed so many of our mythologies and stories.
When I think about Steve Mackey's piece Indigenous Instruments, I think about the power of a white man's imagination. The power of being able to conjure into being a New Indigenous peoples, not ravaged by genocide. I imagine the power of being celebrated, featured, and written about for it. Perhaps it's just a small piece in the scheme of things, but I can't shake how much that piece radicalized me to tell my own stories, to imagine new pasts and futures, and to fundamentally understand that white people gain their power from stealing our traditions and knowledges, our proximity to the divine, the cosmological, and the truth.
_________________
reach out for access to detailed performance notes