Joy Harjo Takes us Through the Milky Way

The first time I burned a Joy Harjo CD into my itunes, I cringed at the sight of the “world” genre listed by the album. But, now I think that “world” might be appropriate in the right context.

Harjo takes us on journey in what is being called Harjo’s “breakthrough” album, Winding Through the Milky Way. But, she reminds us that the journey is a story.

We’re in a story that will always include the ancient while riding to the outer edge. We’ll get there with music, poetry, lyrics, stories, sheer sorrow, and joy.

Songs are yet another form of healing, another form of telling, and another form of surviving. Songs are alive.

The journey—the music—takes us to the place where we can see and experience the power of song. In Harjo’s Mvskoke tradition, the milky way is an avenue that can take us to a different place. I wonder if it doesn’t take us to an alternate world/reality.

I will answer in the clatter […]
Yes, I will reply, I have buried the dead
and made songs of the blood, the marrow

“My Heart” is one of my favorite tracks off Milky Way. The song is featured as a poem in Harjo’s collection A Map to the Next World. “Our skin is the map,” she says, our bodies know how to help us get there, but we travel on the waves of sound produced by music.

“My Heart” opens with the sound of turtle rattlers, shaking that familiar “native” beat; the saxophone enters, adding warmth and density. But, saxophone also speaks for itself, even as it speaks to us and alongside us, with the faint sound of chanting in the background.

Start with a voice. Let it fly free. Bring in a saxophone to touch those places the words can’t reach.

In fact, nothing competes for attention in the composition of the music—everything works in tandem. Sonically, the airiness and “breathiness” of the entire album reminds us of life and movement—of journey.

And, the sonic progression of various tracks is more circular than linear, taking us back, while reminding us of the present and connecting it to a future that is visible, “We were there when Jazz was invented,” she says, as she breaks into a sax solo. And we are still (re)inventing jazz and songs. And by asserting that, we assert sovereignty, and by asserting it through song, we use our bodies as much as we use instruments.

Add an insatiable guitar, some heavy philosophical bass, a little piano, some Mvskoke and other tribal rhythms, to take us back to Congo Square and before, back up into the Milky Way.

So, as I stare at the "world" category that Harjo has been ascribed to, I think that it's a fitting description of what her work does. It takes us on a journey, using our bodies to map the way there—to remember the way—to another world that is inside of this world.

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Joy Harjo

Album: Winding Through The Milky Way

I have posted this for your listening pleasure :), but I will be discussing Harjo's poetry in dialogue with her in a post that is soon to come.

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Peter LaFarge

Album: On The Warpath

Peter Lafarge was born on April 30, 1931, and that is important for me because I was born April 29, 1981. There is a variance, sure, but there is enough similarity there for my ears to perk up.

He is probably most famously known as “the guy who wrote those songs that Johnny cash sang,” and, most notably, “The Ballad of Ira Hayes.”

And when they think that they'd changed me cut my hair to meet their needs
Will they think I'm white or Indian, quarter blood or just half breed?
Let me tell you, Mr teacher, when you say you'll make me right
In five hundred years of fighting not one Indian turned white

He was, however, a musician in his own right, and ran in the Greenwich village circles of the 60’s. His was the kind of protest music was rarely, if ever, heard, though people like Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan would promote his music for years, even after his death in 1965.

Actually, Peter is one of the unsung heroes of the day. His style was just a little bit too erratic. But it wasn’t his fault, he was always hurting and having to overcome it.

Perhaps only a few people ever listened to LaFarge when he was actively protesting with his music. I wasn’t even able to find the lyrics to his songs through a “Lafarge-lyrics” search and had to resort to looking up the lyrics to Johnny Cash’s LaFarge tribute album, Bitter Tears.

I decided that was a good thing, because it made me listen to LaFarge, and listening to LaFarge means listening to his people, his land, and their stories.

Yeah, call him drunken Ira Hayes
But his land is just as dry
And his ghost is lyin' thirsty
In the ditch where Ira died

And, when I listened to the words, instead of reading them, I heard the drums. The single, most solitary musical motif throughout LaFarge’s Warpath (and I would argue, throughout his entire body of work) is the drumbeat. I heard that beat at recent powwow I attended in Lansing, Michgan, and my body recognized it, together with my mind and my soul, when I heard it in LaFarge’s music.

And there are drums beyond the mountain, Indian drums that you can't hear
There are drums beyond the mountain and they're getting mighty near

LaFarge was born on April 30, 1932, and he died young, at age 34. But, his ghost, his music, and his message(s) still resonate, even if only some people can hear him.
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