Sedona Performance

My Sedona experience embraced a collaboration with K. Mockingbird of the Reed people. He was raised on the Diné tah where he ‘listened much to the Wind and spoke to the Stars’ and had the pure joy of learning to play his first flute given to him by his Uncle.

Since then, he has been performing professionally on the Native American flute for 20 years and has recorded 9 CDs. His album “Spirits in the Wind” received a Grammy nomination for Best Native American Album in 2003; in that same year he won the award for Best Native American Duo at the Native American Music Awards.

Mr. Mockingbird performed his original soulful compositions from these recordings He was accompanied by Courtney Yeates on cello and Andy Schulz on acoustic guitar.

He says and I agree…

“We are only a single note lingering in this cosmos, but as one people we make a strong chord in Harmony with the Universe.” ~ Mockingbird

Here’s his website: www.kingbirdmusic.com

The Kenneth G. Mills Foundation presented a program in which I was privileged to read my poetry and have Mr. Mockingbird accompany the words with his original compositions.

The poem is entitled:

The Diné

Hear clear the tones of cedar flow,

Reminding us from place afar,

A gift of art from Navaho,

A sea of sound — a reservoir.

Soft breathy notes pushed from the wood

With airy tones in triple trill,

A calling tune to brotherhood

That bathes the heart when all is still.

Listen to it call the eagle,

The bear, the deer and buffalo,

Brothers of the kingdoms regal,

Sister spirits of long ago.

The ancient sounds from wooden voice,

In sentient wait below the bark,

Now sing in beauty to rejoice —

Returning song to Meadowlark.

MUSIC INTERLUDE

The drumming hearts of The Diné

Transcends in beating pulse sublime

As cadenced rhythm does portray

A nature here, but still divine.

Shoshone, Ute and Navaho,

Proud native hearts of desert west,

Hopi, Zuñi, Arapaho

Beat sacred drums for vision quest.

From spirit then came arrows gold

To find their set within the heart,

So stories old can then be told

As feathers’ stride ’long sacred dart.

Our totem’s call in night’s dark damp

As lovers watch the lunar light

That shows the way to dreamers’ camp

And wings our minds for freeing flight.

There’s crafted shafts and fluted points,

Painted ponies and shaman's chant

Reprise the Past and then anoint

The drumming with a step courante.

When beat of heart and those of drums

Transform the time of honor due,

Ancestral rest then finally comes

And spirit heart is birthed anew.

MUSIC INTERLUDE

Some hardened stones are all that’s left

Of tribal lands of long ago.

Yet knowing tongues now speak of times

When native hearts again bestow —

A sacred cleansing at earth’s breast

With blue corn hallowed on the ground,

And thanks go out from modern minds

Acknowledging a pulse profound.

Distant brother, come share the blood

Of pale skin and ancient shame.

Trust long has bled, as casualty

And broken treaties that proclaim –

The word of some was as the sand

When empty wind would fly its course

And wipe the promise from the heart

When soldiers took with no remorse.

Gentle sister of grassy plain,

Help calm the atavistic rage

That lingers as our history.

Release its curse with smudging sage —

And see the smoke then dissipate

The agony of saddened past

That hardened into crusted doubt

When lands were taken that were vast.

MUSIC INTERLUDE

So hear the tones of cedar flow,

Reminding us from place afar,

A gift of art from Navaho,

A sea of sound — a reservoir.

The breathy notes pushed from the wood

With airy tones in triple trill,

Is calling us to brotherhood

That bathes the heart when all is still.

Listen as it calls the eagle,

The bear, the deer and buffalo,

Brothers of the kingdoms regal,

Sister spirits of long ago.

These ancient sounds from wooden voice,

In sentient wait below the bark,

Now sing in beauty to rejoice —

Returning song to Meadowlark.