Lakota Music Project Merges Two Traditions for One Common Cause

The Prairie Wind Casino and Hotel is a couple of modest buildings just inside the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the southwest corner of South Dakota. On a recent morning, the hotel, surrounded by vast expanses of rolling land, was almost empty, but the low-ceilinged banquet room was filled with music.

Nine members of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra and their conductor, Delta David Gier, were working on a piece with the Dakota flutist Bryan Akipa. They were figuring out how Akipa, who doesn’t read music, could be cued for a new section.

Emmanuel Black Bear — the keeper of the drum, or leader, of the Creekside Singers, a traditional Lakota drum and vocal ensemble — was huddling with the composer Derek Bermel in the hotel’s lobby. Bermel had transcribed some Creekside recordings, arranging a part for the symphony players to join with the Native musicians. One challenge: Black Bear and his group don’t commit in advance to a given tempo when they’re performing their richly wailing songs.

“Sometimes we get excited and want to sing it fast,” he said of one song. “Sometimes it’s lullaby-ish. It’s not set in stone.”

This was a day of colleagues and friends making music together, working through obstacles like those in any rehearsal process. But since the artists involved were part of the orchestra’s longstanding Lakota Music Project, the goal was far greater than just getting ready for a concert: This collaboration between Native American and Western classical artists aimed to address a whole history of racial tension.

“Racism and prejudice, how do we counteract that?” Black Bear said in an interview. “I’ve always said it’s through music. If non-Native people can see us in our natural way of life — music and dance and ceremony and prayer — maybe their minds will change about who we are. Not every one of us is the stereotype. We’re not all drunks and druggies.”