Tag: music

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A Song for the First of May

Even the heartiest of South Dakotans might mutter a nasty word or two under their breath at the sight of snowflakes on May 1, especially after a particularly long, cold winter. Eliza Blue, however, wrote a song about it.

The Perkins County singer/songwriter is releasing her newest single today. “South Dakota, 1st of May” is a beautiful rendition of that period when spring struggles to gain control over winter.

“I wrote the opening verse for this song the first spring I lived in South Dakota after it snowed on May 1,” Blue says. “I am from Minnesota, so I am no stranger to long, cold winters, but that May 1 dusting, combined with the endless wind, made me realize I was in for something pretty different here.”
“This winter has been similarly epic. Christian Begeman and I had to delay our filming date for the video after a spring snow storm in early April. You can see the remnants of it in the background. We’d hoped to go out to the pasture to film, but the drifts made the road impassable, and we had to settle for the yard.”
“The bottom line: There is no doubt, you have to be pretty tough to be a Dakotan!”
Blue grew up in Minnesota, went to college on the East Coast and has lived in New York City and Portland, Maine. She now lives on a ranch in Perkins County with her husband, Max Loughlin, children Wesley (2) and Emmy Rose (1), a herd of sheep and some chickens.
“South Dakota, 1st of May” is the title track of Blue’s new CD, which will be released in July. You can read more about that in our upcoming July/August issue, but for now, listen as Blue conveys, like no one else can, the changing of the seasons.

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Dakota Duets Debuts

Talented musicians can be found in towns and cities, large and small, across South Dakota and our bordering states. Unfortunately, we don’t always get a chance to know and hear those who live outside our own neighborhoods.

That’s exactly why Spearfish singer/songwriter Jami Lynn is hitting the road, performing with six men and women in a new summer-long web series called Dakota Duets.

“There are so many musicians in South Dakota that I really admire,” Jami says.”Some of them are people I’ve gotten to work with in passing. Some of them, I’ve just enjoyed listening to, or learning from. I started this project because I wanted an excuse to work with each musician featured, and to hone my backup skills a bit. It’s also an opportunity for me to play a few different styles of music that I maybe wouldn’t have touched on my own.”

Jami began to perform at age 13, debuting at community gatherings in the little town of Peever in the Glacial Lakes country of northern South Dakota. She majored in music at the University of South Dakota. She also studied and performed in Nashville, but her deep connection to our rural landscapes, people and culture of the Northern Plains called her home. That’s good news for music fans who love her range of country, folk and jazz. She has quickly become one of South Dakota’s most popular performers.

Thanks to a South Dakota Arts Council fellowship grant, Jami is now embarking on the Dakota Duets road trip.

Her first video features Paul Larson, a cowboy poet from Rochford who also performs traditional cowboy music. The duo sings”Butterflies and Pearls,” a cowboy waltz that tells the story of how Larson met his longtime girlfriend, Amy, while riding horseback in the woods.

Jami plans to release five more videos — one in each of the next five months — and you’ll find them all here on our South Dakota Magazine web site. Next up is Thomas Hentges, also known as Burlap Wolf King, of Sioux Falls.

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Dancing in the Sacred Hoop

By Jerry Wilson

Kevin Locke plays a courtship melody he learned from Lakota elders on a traditional cedar wood Lakota flute.

He enters the powwow circle, and like a magnet draws all eyes. He is vigor and smile, a muscular man in long black braids. He wears an aqua ribbon shirt, beaded moccasins, a breechcloth over shorts. A duffel bag balances on his shoulder. He strides to the center and slides his load to the floor as the master of ceremonies announces his name: “Ladies and gentlemen: Kevin Locke.”

The audience stands and claps as Locke opens his bag. He extracts a traditional Lakota cedar wood flute from its leather wrap and begins to play. The song is a heart-opening courtship melody that Locke inherited from generations of elders, an intricate piece that softens the heart, mellows the spirit.

The tune comes to its end and tenderly he lays the flute aside. From the duffel bag he withdraws a big handful of four-colored hoops — red, white, yellow and black. He arranges the hoops on the floor before him. Four men around a big hide-topped drum begin to play. Locke picks up the beat of the drum, and the dance begins.

If the wistful notes of the flute had calmed the soul, the blood is riled to boiling by the dance to come. A whirling dervish, the veritable soul of a whirlwind, Locke scoops up the hoops, one by one, with his toe. They spin about his ankles, rise to his knees, then to his hips to meet his hands. Clockwise he spins, but in the blink of an eye his motion reverses. Around and around he whirls to the beat of the drum, the throbbing nucleus of the circle of humanity of which he has assumed the center.

The figures Locke creates in his dances are constructed of red, white, black and yellow hoops, symbolizing the interrelatedness of the human races.

Above his shoulders a delicate flower blooms from the hoops, only to metamorphose into a fluttering butterfly, then stars and moon and sun. As the dance goes on an eagle extends its wings, madly spiraling, calling forth the love, courage and intelligence of our hearts.

Long having passed the normal bounds of human endurance, the final movement of Locke’s dance at last begins. In this final symphony, a fabulous interlinked structure defines itself, the flower, the butterfly, the eagle and the heavenly bodies evolve to an orbiting globe of human diversity — 28 interlocked hoops, a picture of the unity of humankind.

The dance at its end, Locke bows low and thanks the audience for its thunderous applause. Carefully he extracts his body from the structure he has built and presents it to his audience on the floor. Though he is wet with sweat, his incredible stamina and athleticism belie his 46 years and his 20 years on the road. Hardly winded by the 20-minute, non-stop performance, he projects the words that his dance has spun.

The four-colored hoops represent completeness and unity, he says, the four human races, four directions, four seasons, four winds. “God wants us to reach,” he explains, “reach for more light, feed our roots and blossom. We are all branches of the great human family tree. We can soar like the eagles, give off fragrance like the flowers.” But we can realize our beauty and our potential only as we set aside our divisions, our distrust, our prejudice and fear of one another, he says.

His homily ended, Locke drags another 70 hoops from his bag and spins them across the floor to the people who form the circle. They step forward to embrace the hoops — Indian girls in jingle dresses, grandmothers in shawls, men in feathers and beads, others in jeans or suits — and the enchanted assembly joins the dance.

When that dance is done Locke gathers the hoops again, thanks the dancers and drummers, and offers thanks to God/Wakan for holding us in the palm of his hand as we walk with strength this beautiful road of life.

This is Locke’s second of three performances this day — the work around which his life has revolved for two decades. His performances have helped to revive the traditional Native flute, and he is among its top players in the nation, with 11 recorded albums of his music. And he is perhaps the premier living hoop dancer, having performed in 70 countries around the world.

Firmly rooted in Lakota culture, Kevin Locke has become a missionary for human harmony and global unity. Though South Dakotan by birth and by choice, he is also a cosmopolitan citizen of the world. But Locke didn’t plan to spend his life dancing around the globe. In fact, his formative years were passed in close communion with an elderly traditional uncle, Abraham End of Horn, who spoke Lakota and trained the boy in the traditions of his culture.

Locke grew up near Wakpala on the Standing Rock Reservation. When he left home in the early 1970s, it was to pursue a somewhat standard professional career. By the end of the decade he had completed the course work for a doctor’s degree in education at the University of South Dakota and was planning to study law. But then his calling came.

Locke projects an image of human harmony with this whirling chain of interlocked hoops.

A North Dakota brother, Arlo Good Bear, offered to teach Locke the hoop dance. Kevin would travel many places, meet many people, be an emissary from the Lakota people, his friend told him. Good Bear offered one lesson now, and promised more in the future. The two got together and Good Bear introduced Locke to the dance of the sacred hoop. A week later, Good Bear was dead. Locke was among the men who carried him to his grave.

Back to the traditional career in education or law, Locke thought. But then the dreams began. Not once, not twice, but again and again, he met his friend in his dreams. And there were others too, people from across the generations, people from around the globe, from many other tribes, Europeans, Asians, Africans. In the dream, Good Bear danced designs of nature, birds, flowers and rainbows. Locke saw that his brother had kept his promise. The lessons were continuing, and with them, a clearer definition of Kevin’s role. He saw that he must carry this thing forward, create patterns of beauty that would unite peoples around the Earth.

As his dreams foretold, Locke has traveled and lived among the tribes and peoples of the world. His heart has sponged the spiritual visions of all, his mind their wisdom. He has studied the spiritual quests of man, and conclusions have grown: At bottom, and properly interpreted, the great spiritual visions of humankind are the same. They lift our spirits, give us hope, unite our dreams, extend our arms around each other. This unifying vision Locke has found best expressed in the words of the 19th century prophet Bah·’u’ll·h.

Locke grew up under the influence of both Christian and Lakota spiritual traditions. But his personal vision coalesced when he found the teachings of Bah·’u’ll·h, a Persian nobleman in Iran who in the middle of the 19th century gave up the comfort and security of his princely life to seek and teach a vision of global unity of humankind. Bah·’u’ll·h taught that there is only one God and only one human race, and that all religions have been stages in the revelation of God’s will and purpose for humanity. “The earth is but one community,” he wrote, “and mankind its citizens.”

For Locke, the Bah·’i Faith is a logical extension of the teachings of Lakota culture. The family and tribal unity symbolized by the sacred hoop of the Lakota is broadened to include the entire family of man. Bah·’i incorporates the missions of transcendent visionaries such as Krishna, Moses, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad, finding unity instead of conflict in these separate visions. Now humanity has come of age, endowed with the collective capacity to see the entire human spiritual panorama as a single evolutionary process. It is that which calls Kevin Locke to be a global wanderer, an international envoy for peace, a prophet of unity.

Locke helps Lakota youth learn traditional songs and dances every summer at Milk’s Camp, a retreat on land that once belonged to Chief Milk in Gregory County.

Thus Locke has embraced the challenge of the new millennium we have now begun. “We must create a circle of humanity,” he says. “We must move out of our ‘boxist’ mentality, our tendency to categorize each other. In a hoop or a circle,” he notes, “there is no back row. Everybody has a front row. We must work to strengthen ourselves, links in a mighty circling chain, to overcome violence, addictions, racism and hate. ” More than the world’s most renowned hoop dancer, more than a leading reviver of the classical Native flute, Locke is intermediary for unity to the world, Lakota ambassador, proclaimer of peace to humankind.

“Global unity is inevitable,” he says. “Peace is inevitable. It’s a rendezvous that we have, and there’s no getting around it. But at the same time, potent forces of disintegration and chaos confront us. Our challenge is to connect ourselves with each other and with the powerful forces of cohesion in the world. The Bah·’i community is committed to random acts of kindness, to senseless acts of beauty,” Locke said. “But it’s systematic, a way of life.”

While Locke labors for unity and peace on the global front, he has not forgotten his native state. “I’ve seen a lot of progress toward racial reconciliation in South Dakota,” he said. “Of course it’s frustrating sometimes. I’d like to see things move faster. But there is movement, toward sobriety, toward recognition of spiritual unity, toward validation of our unique individual contributions. Today is part of a process, and hopefully we can measure progress as we move systematically down the path to reconciliation, from darkness to light.”

Watching Locke dance, absorbing the sweet melodies of his flute, listening to his uplifting words, it is hard to imagine pain behind his smile. Yet, like everyone else, Locke encounters negativity and conflict. “But I try to be non-confrontational,” he says. “I seek a positive avenue or attitude, and negative things evaporate and disappear.”

Watching the power and elasticity with which he dances, it is also hard to imagine that he will ever stop. Yet, at age 46 he knows he can’t maintain this pace and speed forever. “I plan to continue this particular spiritual mission as long as I feel I can make a contribution,” he said. “Or until I see a different path for myself.”

Kevin Locke gathers the last of his things, brushes back the strands of graying long black hair that have worked their way loose from his gyrating braids, and offers his hand. He is off to his third performance of the day, for a group of children at the middle school. Probably they’ve seen him already, on public television’s “3-2-1 Contact.” But they are about to encounter in person a man they will not soon forget. A man whose vision for their future could alter their lives.

Editorís Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2000 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

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Our King of Rock & Roll

By Chuck Cecil

As a Sioux Falls Washington High School senior in 1959, Lee promoted his hit record “Rona Baby,” at the Prom Ballroom in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was surrounded by fans seeking his autograph.

Editor’s Note: The South Dakota Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will induct its newest class April 15-16 at the Ramkota Exhibit Hall in Sioux Falls. Nine bands will be inducted and will stage a concert. Myron Lee and the Caddies were among the groups honored in 2009. South Dakota Magazine featured Lee in its November/December 2004 issue. To order a copy or to subscribe, call (800) 456-5117.

Myron Wachendorf of Sioux Falls is not a household name, but mention his stage name, Myron Lee, and a generation of South Dakotans recognize the father of South Dakota rock and roll. The Caddies turned out crowds across South Dakota and the Midwest in the late 1950s and early 1960s. After a remarkable 34 years with The Caddies, Myron Lee still performs, though in a different way. Myron the DJ spins music at private parties, weddings and special events.

On tour with Dick Clark of American Bandstand in 1963, Myron Lee and the Caddies was selected for Clark’s Caravan of Stars.

He doesn’t miss being a vocalist, says the rhythm guitarist and band leader who gained national attention and appeared on two North American tours with Dick Clark of American Bandstand and with Buddy Knox, Bobby Vee, Conway Twitty, Roy Orbison, the Everly Brothers, Frankie Vallee and the Four Seasons.

The band is gone, but its fans have not forgotten. Young fans of 40 years ago enjoyed the music into their middle age years and beyond. Their sons and daughters and even grandchildren sought Lee out at dances late in his career and told him stories they’d heard about the band.

“Ruskin Park Ballroom is a great memory,” said Karen Hoffman of rural Artesian, who attended dances at the famed dancehall near Forestburg in the 1960s with future husband Jim.”The first thing that comes to mind is Myron Lee and the Caddies. I can still hear ‘Peter Rabbit’ and ‘Little Boy Blue,'” she said.

Terry Woster of Pierre, news reporter and columnist for the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, says Myron Lee was a constant in his life for more than 30 years.”He’s a South Dakota legend and rock hero whose dances bring back everything that was best about those happy days.”

Lee climbed aboard the rock and roll bandwagon when the driving new beat was in its infancy. For him it started with the 1955 movie”Blackboard Jungle” and its theme song”Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets.”I’ll never forget that afternoon at the Hollywood Theater in Sioux Falls,” Myron said. That sound, and Sonny James singing”Young Love” at the Arkota Ballroom, started Myron on his storied career.

After the James concert, Myron decided to become a performer like his father. Bob Wachendorf’s band, Bob’s Swingsters, played in the Parker and Marion area. His father died when Myron was eight, but during their brief time together he instilled in Myron a love of music and taught him the F and C chords on the piano. Sometimes he took Myron to dances in Sioux Falls, where the family had moved soon after Myron was born in Parker in 1941.”At the Melody Ballroom, he’d even let me play the drums for a few tunes,” Myron remembers.

As a junior in high school, Myron organized a small combo, abandoned the piano he played by ear and taught himself to play the guitar. The name”Caddies” came from Myron’s part-time golf course job at the Minnehaha Country Club.”It sounded like a wholesome, clean cut name,” he said. The Caddies played their first gig at The Stardust Club in east Sioux Falls for $15 a night. Soon they were booked at the Sioux Falls Cabana Club.

The Caddies’ first out of town performance was in 1958 at the Groveland Park Ballroom of Tyndall, now a machine shed on a Bon Homme County farm.

Too young to be where liquor was sold, they needed a chaperone and a note from Myron’s mother. Myron picked the songs people liked.”We listened to the Top Forty hits on KIHO radio and memorized the good ones,” he said.

Their first out-of-town job was playing intermissions at a”big band” dance at Groveland Park Ballroom in Tyndall. The people loved the music, and booed when the regular accordion band returned to the stage, he said.”It was embarrassing, but we couldn’t do anything about it.”

The ballroom manager, George Beringer, took note of The Caddies’ popularity and invited them back, and soon the band was in great demand. Myron hired a Sioux Falls radio DJ, Ki-Ho Helgie (Bob Helgeson) to manage the band.

From Ruskin Park to the Surf in Clear Lake, Iowa, the Paragon Ballroom in Kimball and a bank converted to a dance hall in Dimock, Myron Lee and the Caddies were hot. They played now-defunct ballrooms across the region, including 40 nights in the famed Holly Hock Ballroom in Hatfield, Minn. Johnson’s Barn, near Arthur, N.D., was a working dairy barn, with the haymow converted to a dancehall.”The cows didn’t bother us much,” he remembers,”but the place had a certain aroma, and it was always a surprise to hear bellowing in the background.”

Sioux Falls television personality Doug Lund was part of the early 1960s rock and roll scene.”When a lot of young guys, including me, were forming rock and roll bands, Myron Lee and the Caddies were already there and had set the bar of excellence awfully high,” he said.”Everything about the group, from their music to their stage presence, was tuned to perfection.”

Myron Lee not only had a popular band, but was a talented writer, with 13 records and three albums to his credit. He teamed with his future wife, Carole, to write the lyrics for”Rona Baby,” which climbed to number 10 on regional charts. He promoted the song at the famed Prom Ballroom in St. Paul, Minn., appearing with WDGY disc jockey Bill Diehl. His early song”Homicide,” cut on the Hep label in 1958, still has a following in England.

When Ki-Ho Helgie left, Myron and big band drummer Jimmy Thomas of Luverne, Minn., agreed to a five-year booking contract.”I was 17, so I couldn’t sign,” Lee said.”My mother signed for me. Jimmy said I could make as much as $150 a week. I thought I was a millionaire.”

Thomas advised Myron to put his name on the billing to insure the band’s continuity. Wachendorf was too long, and”people might think we were a polka band,” Myron remembers. A fan of singer Brenda Lee, he adopted her last name.

School became more difficult; Myron often fell asleep in class.”Just let him sleep,” the teacher once told other students.”He’s making more money than I am.”

In Sioux Falls in 1962, Myron Lee and the Caddies appeared on the same billing with the Everly Brothers. Myron is in the middle, with Don (left) and Phil.

During gigs in North Dakota, Myron met Bobby Vee. They became close friends, and still maintain contact. Lee and the Caddies backed up Vee on tours of the east coast and throughout North America.

Another big break was when singer Buddy Knox asked the Caddies to back him up on the first American rock and roll coast-to-coast tour of Canada.”I saw my first Eskimo in Flin Flon,” Myron remembers.

In 1963, on Vee’s recommendation, Dick Clark hired Myron’s band as the opening act and backup band for the singers on his Caravan of Stars. The Caddies memorized over 60 songs popularized by Jimmy Clanton, The Ronnettes and Brian Hyland, whose”Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” was an international gold record. On November 22, 1963, Myron and Hyland watched President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade pass just blocks from the Texas Schoolbook Depository. They heard the rifle shots that took the president’s life. That tour ended in sadness, but Clark was so impressed with Myron and his band that he invited them back for a second Caravan of Stars tour in 1965.

When the Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan show Feb. 9, 1964, the music scene began to change. Myron’s band returned to South Dakota to play clubs, lounges and private parties. But now he had to find what he described as”real work” to support his wife and three children. He sold snowmobiles and worked in the KELO television studio and as a Sioux Falls radio talk show host. He continued to find an occasional evening job doing what he loved to do.

By the 1980s, the Caddies’ brand of rock and roll had regained popularity. Lee’s best year ever was 1989, he said. But music continued to change. Young people went to see roiling smoke, flashing strobe lights, gaudy make-up, grungy costumes and heavy metal. Lee had also had his fill of travel to venues where he’d performed 30 or 40 times. He began to notice the drudgery of setting up equipment, the difficulty of late night hours and the long, early morning drives home to Sioux Falls.

The Caddies last performed at a Vern Eide Christmas party in Sioux Falls in 1992. It was an emotional ending to a long and successful career.”I guess I just suffered from severe burn out,” Lee said.”I’ve since been asked to return for one final dance, and offered good money to do it.” But he’s seen other entertainers try to make a comeback.”I’d rather have people remember us as we once were,” he said.

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Nora Store Christmas

Mike Pedersen, of Nora, has always liked Christmas. When he set up an old pipe organ in the town’s former country store in 1989, he decided to throw a big party. People have been joining him for holiday sing-alongs ever since.

Nora, southwest of Alcester in the middle of Union County, was never a big town. Today the population is five according to the town sign. The Nora store closed in 1962. It’s now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and Pedersen accepts free will donations at the sing-alongs for upkeep and restoration. He has festively decorated the charming shop with toys and gifts from past sing-along guests. An old pot bellied stove warms the room, neighbor women bring cookies and Pedersen makes the coffee and cider. Guests shout requests and Pedersen plays them on a beautifully restored organ. When his fingers get tired he makes room for somebody else. A young man named Nick, blind since birth, shared a few solos with the welcoming crowd last weekend. Other young guests later accompanied the organ with flute and trumpet.

Pedersen has extended this season’s open house for two more days. Guests are invited to enjoy this unique holiday experience Friday, Dec. 18, and Saturday, Dec. 19, at 6:30 p.m. Nora Store is 4 miles east of Union Grove State Park at 30707 475th Avenue. Call Pedersen at 605-670-1455 with questions.

Photos by Rebecca Johnson. To see a short video from last Sunday, click here.

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Rosebud’s Voice

By Michael Zimny

Before a producer from MTV’s Rebel Music contacted Frank Waln, he was just one rapper among a generation of young Lakota artists trying to get their music out there — online, at shows in high school gyms and auditoriums, any way they could. Now that millions have seen the show, the Sicangu Lakota artist from the Rosebud Reservation — who now lives in Chicago where he’s working on his debut album — has become a symbol for a burgeoning scene.

Rebel Music: Native America, which recently aired and is available online, has created a national buzz around Waln, as well as the other artists featured — including Lakota artist Mike”Witko” Cliff (from Pine Ridge), Nataanii Means and Canadian artist Inez Jasper. The program visits the artists in their respective communities, introducing them and their music, then follows them as they confront issues from the disappearances of Native women and girls in Canada to protests against the Keystone pipeline in South Dakota.

We caught up with Waln as he prepared to headline the Black Hills Unity Concert to ask him about his creative process, artistic influences, and what the Hills mean to him.

MZ: Can you talk a little about how the Rebel Music’s Native American documentary came together?

FW: Yeah, it was a long process. I was the first artist they reached out to last summer. I got an email, and I get a lot of emails from people saying they are creating a documentary about Natives and we want to feature you, and I’m pretty reluctant about it because the way people portray us — it’s just hard if they are non-Native. Because they don’t come from the place where we come from. I wrote her a long explanation of why I’m reluctant about bringing people into my home and bringing people to the rez. She said she understood and forgot to tell me she was a Native woman. She said, ‘I wrote my Ph.D. on indigenous hip-hop and I’m the lead researcher for this project.’

Many conference calls and meetings [later], through that whole process I started to feel very comfortable with the project, because the lead researcher was a Native woman and the co-producer was a Native, and the whole production team listened to all of the Natives. It was unprecedented for a mainstream production team to listen to the Native people that are being portrayed the way that they want to be portrayed.

It was one of the first mainstream media projects that I’ve seen where it was true. It was real stories about real Native people and things we were facing. It wasn’t like Natives burning wagons and stealing white women or look at these alcoholics, and savages and drunks. It was like, no this is our home, we’re human beings, we survived genocide and this is what we’re going through. It was very real and very raw and I’m very proud of that project.

I never in a million years thought I would be on TV. I’m just a kid from the Rosebud. I almost quit so many times — I thought there was no hope for me to do music. I thought there was no hope for me. I never thought my music would make it out of the rez, let alone South Dakota. It was a big validation for me, and a big milestone in my career.

MZ: What does the Black Hills Unity Concert mean to you?

FW: To me, the Black Hills Unity Concert is about just that — unifying as people across cultures, across economic borders, across all these borders that are put up to keep us separate. Coming together and realizing that ultimately this place, this home, this land, this water — this is ours and we need to come together to protect it, to keep it safe and stay a place that we can be proud of and that we can call beautiful and that we can call home. As a young Lakota person, to me it’s also a statement and testament to the strength and resistance and the beauty that my ancestors had. Because I’m not supposed to be here. The government tried to wipe us out. The government took the Black Hills from us. The government didn’t want me to be alive. So the fact that I’m a live Lakota person standing here in the Black Hills as an artist using my voice to speak out for the Black Hills is a beautiful thing to me and it gives me hope that one day everything is going to be OK.

MZ: What rappers have influenced you?

FW: My introduction to hip hop was Eminem. It was the emotion of the music that really struck a chord with me. After that I heard Nas and the song”One Mic.” That’s when I knew I wanted to be a rapper. Nas was speaking to his community in an empowering way.”All I need is one mic to change the world.” That was a profound statement for me to hear, being a kid on the rez who loved making music.

MZ: Nas is a good example of an artist who does”conscious” material like”One Mic” as well as more radio-friendly”get money” music. Do you feel as comfortable with both?

FW: I listen to Kendrick Lamar and I listen to Young Thug. For me, when I sit down I just write down whatever I’m feeling that day. Sometimes it’s conscious stuff. I’m working on an album right now and it’s about trauma and love and I guess that could be conscious and it could not. I’m gonna write about both. I’m not big on the”make money” type because I’m not living that. You know I’m still doing what I can to pay the rent so I’m not writing music about what I don’t live.

MZ: Who are some hip-hop producers that influenced you as far as sound?

FW: Dr. Dre was a big influence on me. A lot of the music coming out of the West Coast we would listen to back on the rez.

Organized Noise is definitely a big influence production-wise, and Hi-Tek. They drew from familiar influences but then they used that to create something fresh and something new. That’s what I’m striving to do. It’s always those producers that did something different. Also Rick Rubin, as a producer who just does whatever he has to do to bring the best out of the track.

And you know South Dakota is in a cool place. It’s in the middle of the country and we get music from all over. I grew up on country because I lived in South Dakota.

MZ: Back to the Black Hills Unity Concert, and the history of the Hills you touched on — how feasible do you think it is that the Treaty will be honored?

FW: I hope that it is. It’s kind of messed up that we even have to ask this question, because the documents that founded this country — it would just make sense that the government would honor them. How can we call this the greatest country in the world and not even honor the original contracts that founded this place? Do I think it will happen in my lifetime? No. Will I stop fighting for that to happen? No. I think looking at this long term, this is something that the Native people do — we think about generations.

Instead of just thinking about me and how much money I can make at the expense of the land, I’m thinking about what I can do to impact seven generations down the line. I’m using my voice, my music, my art, to hopefully see a day where my nieces and nephews and children (someday, I’m not a father yet) will live in a South Dakota, live in the Black Hills, where we’re treated like first class citizens. I have hope that will happen. Not in my lifetime, but I will not stop doing what I can to make sure I see that happen.

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Soul Butter & Hog Wash

Rock Garden Tour, a South Dakota Public Radio show, is doing a barn tour called “Soul Butter and Hog Wash.” They taped at Governor Dennis Daugaard’s rural Dell Rapids barn earlier, and on August 29 they taped the show at the Bernie and Myrna Hunhoff barn north of Yankton near the little farming town of Utica.
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Flute Master

By Michael Zimny

Bryan Akipa with an eagle whistle.

As a young artist studying under Oscar Howe, Bryan Akipa was launched on a new trajectory in life by a conversation about mallards. Akipa, who was born and raised on the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Reservation where he still resides, was studying painting under the master Dakota artist at the University of South Dakota.

“He used to do research on his paintings, and he was working on something to do with mallards,” says Akipa. “He asked me if I went duck hunting and I said ‘yes,’ and he asked me about how [mallards] take off from the water.” As they were talking about flight patterns of waterfowl, Howe brought out a mallard-head flute crafted by the late Lakota flute maker Richard Fool Bull.

A mallard flute by Lakota artist Richard Fool Bull inspired Akipa to research Native flute making.

“I had never seen flutes in our culture before. I didn’t realize we had flutes.” The instruments sparked his interest. He began making sketches of traditional flutes, empowered by his high school drafting classes and inspired by the work of Fool Bull, who he met once briefly at the Howe studio. From those sketches, he went on to create his own prototype with a pocketknife.

At the time, Native American flutes were an endangered art form. If it weren’t for a handful of artists like Richard Fool Bull — a tribal member at the Rosebud Indian Reservation — who bridged the gap between the days when much of Dakota/Lakota/Nakota language and heritage was illegal and today, the art may have been lost.

“People started noticing that I was interested and talking about it, and finally someone said, ‘One of my grandmother’s cousins knows about flutes.'” He was introduced to elder Norman Blue and then to another elder, David Marks, who continued his education in flute making.

Akipa has a large collection of found and self-made traditional wind instruments, including these eagle-bone whistles.

“David Marks had made and played flutes when he was younger. He had received a flute in 1918 from his grandfather. [Blue and Marks] taught me a lot of oral history. They taught me the songs. I started learning the flute as a cultural journey.”

Akipa has never studied music. His interest in creating the instruments led him to learn to play.

As his knowledge grew and he mastered the craft he became part a generation of young Native flute players — along with Carlos Nakai, Kevin Locke [Cheyenne River Reservation] and others — from different tribes, who revived the tradition in different ways.

His career took another Howe-like detour after a couple semesters at USD. Coming from a family with a proud history of military service — his uncle Woodrow Wilson Keeble was a legendary hero of the Korean War and one of three Native Americans awarded the Medal of Honor — he enlisted and spent a few years in the Army. While he was away, he corresponded with his mentor.”We kept in contact. I’d come back on leave and go visit him. Then when I got out of the Army I studied under him again.”

Soon after Akipa returned from his time in service though, Howe passed away. Feeling unanchored, he followed in the footsteps of his mentor yet again, completing an internship as a teacher at the Pierre Indian Learning Center (PILC). There he perfected the craft and started again to find his own path, building a reputation as a flute maker.

The ċan aaki, or saddle, seen tied with leather cord to these instruments, is unique to Native American flutes.

The basement of his home on the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate is a woodwind workshop bursting with flutes of all sizes, adorned with the heads of eagles, bear and elk. He carves most of his flutes from eastern red cedar, but experiments with other mediums.

He’s begun working with the stalks of sweet corn, inspired by reading about the Hidatsa oral historian Buffalo Bird Woman. He’s also working with giant sunflower stalks. He has a small collection (some self-made) of whistles made from the bones of eagle wings. He keeps reams of meticulously drawn hole-pattern maps that determine the scale and range of different instruments.

A unique component of flutes from various Native American cultures is the incorporation of what some Dakota traditionally called the ċan aaki, also called a saddle or tuning block, a sometimes-ornate, sometimes utilitarian wooden piece that enters the tube from a notch on the top of the instrument.

Instead of a sharper-edged embouchure-hole at one end, Dakota flutes have round openings on both sides and no reed. A vertical bridge in the interior part of the saddle creates two air channels. This manipulates the air jet produced by the player, creating sound. The saddle is usually affixed with leather cord and can be adjusted to fine tune the sound of the instrument.”Every culture has flutes, but [Native American] flutes are the only flutes in the world that use this method.”

A table in Akipa’s workshop with hole pattern diagrams and flutes.

Despite not having a formal musical education, having taught himself to recreate what had almost become a lost art, Akipa also began receiving attention for his playing skills, first at the PILC and local museums, then internationally. He released his first album, The Flute Player, in 1993. He has released five more since, receiving several”Nammy” nominations and traveling around the world. Beyond flute making and music, Akipa is also exploring digital arts.

In the past few years, with elder family members to care for, he hasn’t traveled so far from the Oyate to play, though he did perform last year with the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra as part of the Lakota Music Project. While his work as a performer has made him an international ambassador for the music of the Native American flute, one or more of the instruments he is creating now in his workshop may become draft cards of sorts for the next generation to carry forward the art form, like a mallard-head flute made by Richard Fool Bull was for him.

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Music Man

Composer and Aberdeen native John Cacavas died Tuesday, Jan. 28 at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., at age 83. During his long career in Hollywood, Cacavas scored more than 400 one-hour TV shows (including Kojak and Hawaii Five-O), 50 television movies and 15 feature films, but he got his start in the Hub City. He is survived by his wife Bonnie, also an Aberdeen native, and three daughters.

A memorial service was held in California, but local donations for the John Cacavas Memorial may be made in his honor to the Aberdeen Public School Foundation, 1224 Third St., Aberdeen, SD 57401.

In 2003, Cacavas wrote a short memoir for South Dakota Magazine. Here is his story in his own words.

MUSIC. THAT’S WHAT I DO. Compose, orchestrate, conduct and produce it. All kinds. It all began in Aberdeen in the early’40s. My hometown was musically rich with junior and high school bands, orchestras and choirs, plus the various musical organizations from Northern State College. There was a civic orchestra, a municipal band, a Shriner’s Band and about seven dance orchestras, not to mention church choirs, concerts from visiting organizations and artists and private music lessons galore.

The first phase of my musical career was a disaster. Like a lot of 11-year-olds, I took piano lessons on Saturday mornings. I was so ungifted on the keyboard that I flunked my first year and had to go to summer piano school. Regular summer school, OK, but summer piano school? It was very embarrassing, not only to me, but also to my folks. They thought maybe they were raising a real dummy. After all, there was some talent in my family. My mom played piano by ear (black keys only), and my dad was a great dancer, performing Greek dances and jitterbug routines.

When they told me I didn’t have to take lessons any more, I was relieved. Now I could play baseball with Bob Keeler’s South Side team.

But one Sunday afternoon when I was 13, my life changed forever. I went to the Capital Theater and saw a movie called”Stage Door Canteen.” Many of the nation’s big-name bands were in it — Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Guy Lombardo and others. I immediately decided that I wanted to be a saxophone player. My dad, citing my failure as a pianist, was not excited about participating in another fleeting interest. But eventually, with great reluctance, he bought me a used alto sax at Gallet’s jewelry store on south Main.

I taught myself to play the sax, and a couple of months later, as a seventh-grader at Simmons, I joined the junior high band. I had found my dream.

A year later I started my own six-piece band, and played my first professional engagement. Where? At the Moccasin recreation center for my own 14th birthday party. My mom hired me. I think my folks paid us $5 each. We knew only six songs, but it was a start.

When I was a sophomore at Central High, I had a falling out with the school’s band director. He did not approve of my being a professional, so I left the high school band. Even though I had started and was leading a terrific 16-member school dance band,”The Golden Blues,” it was not a hard decision.

We had 11 players in my new band, and we were not too bad. Life on the road appealed to me more than playing and freezing at high school football games. Besides, now I was getting paid to play. My parents backed me all the way. They bought me musical arrangements, a public address system, music stands and spotlights. Even a car and trailer.

I gradually began making musical arrangements for my band. My first efforts were not so hot, but gradually I became more proficient at the art.

While still in junior high, I had worked at our family restaurant, The Virginian, on south Main. I worked as a waiter — and later as a chef — from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekends and seven days a week during vacations. For that I got $11 a week.

One day I got a call from a local bandleader, Bill Klitz. He had an 11-piece band with a four-man sax section, and one of his sax players was ill. Could I take his place? You bet! The job was at Tacoma Park, a few miles northeast of Aberdeen. They picked me up, I played the job and I was a big hit. They even let me play a few jazz solos!

Afterwards the musicians lined up for their pay. For playing three hours and having the best time of my life, I got $14! I got home about 2 a.m. and woke my parents. I told them about my evening with the band and how much I’d been paid. My dad looked at me for a moment, and said,”I think it’s time for you to leave the restaurant business.” And I did.

My band played all the local venues, the Roof Garden (no longer there), private parties at the Alonzo Ward Hotel, the Country Club and Wylie Park, even in towns up to 200 miles away.

After high school I attended Northern State College for two years. My band prospered, and we grew in demand. I then transferred to Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., where I began writing songs for campus shows, and my life-long passion for serious music flowered.

From there I got drafted and became a music arranger for the United States Army Band in Washington, D.C. It was a great time, and I learned an awful lot. There were a few South Dakota guys in the band, and we had mini-South Dakota reunions with some fellows in a nearby Air Force Band.

After my discharge I moved to New York. I had succeeded in getting some of my works published, so I felt I was on my way. I pounded pavements, wrote jingles and songs and became a freelancer for many publishers. My first song to connect,”Over and Over,” was recorded by Guy Lombardo. He played it on the”Ed Sullivan Show.”

By this time I realized there were thousands of sax players, but not many arrangers and composers. I decided that a wonderful phase of my life was over. I sold my sax one month to pay the rent.

In New York I continued to get my school music published, did a lot of arranging and even became the second conductor at CBS, a great step upwards.

During this time I was courting an Aberdeen girl, Bonnie Becker, whose parents owned the Harbor Cafe in Aberdeen. After much persuasion, cajoling and threats, she married me. As a psychiatric social worker, she had the regular job and I was the freelancer who also did the cooking. It was a great arrangement, and one of the smartest moves of my life. After 44 years together and three wonderful kids, that ain’t bad!

Bonnie went on to become a lyric writer. After all, why not keep it in the family? After our daughters were grown, they too wrote many lyrics for publication. Bonnie also began writing cookbooks, and for the last few years has been a crisis response counselor.

After visiting another Aberdeen lad, Charles Buttz and his wife Terri, in Darien, Conn., one weekend, we decided to move there. It was a small New England town and looked like a fine place to bring up kids. I became director of publications and later acting manager of Chappell & Co., Inc., then and probably now the world’s largest music publishing house. That position and a short tenure at Bourn Music as an arranger were the only full-time jobs I ever had. Not counting my career in The Virginian, of course.

We went to London to record my first album, which turned into a love affair with that city for Bonnie and me. I still do a lot of recording in London, so we have an apartment in the city and manage to spend about three months there each year.

In 1973, Hollywood called, and we’ve been here ever since. During those three decades, I scored hundreds of movies, TV shows and albums.

I don’t think any of this good fortune would have happened without my upbringing in South Dakota. I learned real values and had the opportunity to pursue my musical dream. It was a happy and golden time.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2003 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Singing Across South Dakota

South Dakota’s newest country music talent performs in Yankton next Thursday (May 23). Rehme Sutton, who grew up on a ranch near Burke, has just debuted her first album and she included a stop in Yankton as part of a home-state tour.

The free show begins at 9 p.m. at Yankton’s newest music venue, Rounding Third (aka Robbie’s Little Casino) on Third Street. Everyone is invited to attend.

The Sutton name is synonymous with rodeo, ranching and politics in South Dakota. All those traditions are part of Rehme’s music.

Her grandfather Billie Sutton was a state legislator who ran for lieutenant governor, and her brother Billie was a college rodeo star before he was badly injured by a bronc several years ago. Fortunately, he survived and is now a state senator. He’s the subject of “Billie’s Song,” the finale of his sister’s album, “Long Road Home.”

Rehme has a passion for singing and guitar-playing that comes through loud and clear in her stage performances. Mix that with a deep love of her home state, and the result is a musical freshness that is gaining attention across the country.

Her itinerary includes the following stops.

STURGIS — May 21 at the Knuckle

FORT PIERRE — May 22 at the Casey Tibbs Rodeo Center

YANKTON — May 23 at Rounding Third, 9 p.m.

BURKE — May 25 at Stella’s