Episode #85: House of Night: The Lost Creation Songs of the Mojave People

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The story of an aging pile of forgotten reel-to-reel tapes discovered on the shelf of a tribal elder on the Fort Mojave Reservation. Recorded by an amateur ethnographer in the 1960s, these tapes of the last Creation Song singer of the tribe recount the legends and origin of the Mojave people. They are oral maps of the desert region that were instrumental in helping to save the Ward Valley from becoming a nuclear waste dump site.

In the 1960s, a CBS radio engineer out of Los Angeles, drove out to the Colorado River Indian Reservation in Parker, Arizona with his portable reel-to-reel tape recorder with the idea of recording the Mojave Indians. There he met Emmett Van Fleet, an elder of the tribe and the last of the Creation Song singers. Over the course of several years, Guy Tyler made his weekend pilgrimages, and slowly and meticulously the two men recorded the 525 song cycle that recounts the legend of the creation and origin of the Mojave people, their traditions, and their oral maps that describe historical journeys, sacred sites, and directions about how to safely cross the Mojave Desert. Emmett Van Fleet left the tapes to his nephew Llewllyn Barrackman. As years went by and technology changed, the tapes were unplayed and forgotten until Phillip Klasky and the Storyscape Project worked to get the the tapes transferred and preserved.

In 1995, when action was taken to turn Ward Valley into a nuclear waste dump, traditional Mojave songs and song cycles helped save the endangered Ward Valley and Colorado River by proving the historic connection the Mojave have with this sacred land.

In 1999 The Kitchen Sisters travelled to the Mojave Reservation with writer and environmentalist Phil Klasky, to meet with LLewllyn Barrackman and other Mojave elders, birdsong singers and activists in the Ward Valley struggle.

Produced with Phillip Klasky, Director of the Storyscape Project.

Coming in 2018: The Keepers / Help Meet Our Match

“People are always like, ‘Tell us why you like libraries.’ And it’s like why you like food — because it keeps you alive.”   — Colson Whitehead

Dear Friends,

Greetings at year’s end. We write to wish you well and to thank you for your support and spirit. We are about to embark on a new NPR and podcast series, The Keepers — stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, collectors and historians. Keepers of the culture and the cultures and collections they keep. Guardians of history, large and small, protectors of the free flow of information and ideas, eccentric individuals who take it upon themselves to preserve some part of our cultural heritage. The Keepers will premiere on Morning Edition, with a listenership of some 14 million people, early in 2018.

A generous group of donors, The Council of Keepers, including Susan Sillins, Susie Franklin, Barbara & Howard Wollner, has committed a matching challenge of $30,000 to bring these stories to air and inspire our supporters. Please help us raise this match.

This new series promises to be one of our most timely and powerful — a series of truth-seeking, richly layered, lushly produced stories that you, our community, make possible. We ask for your support for this new, compelling collection of stories and invite your tips and suggestions for who and what needs chronicling.

Please make a tax-deductible contribution to The Kitchen Sisters Productions today. With The Council of Keepers match your gift will be doubled.

Thank you for supporting the stories.

Love,
Nikki & Davia

 

Photo courtesy of Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County

Support the Stories / An Archival Calling

Photo postcard of Annie Wooten, circa 1920s from the Amistad Research Center, Tulane University

“My archival calling was, I believe, part of my spiritual calling.”
-Brenda Billups Square

Last week, we shared a story from New Orleans. The story of Leona Tate, who as a six-year-old was one of the first African American children to integrate an all-white school in New Orleans. Today we share a moment from a story about Brenda Billups Square, co-pastor of Beecher Memorial Congregational United Church of Christ and an archivist documenting New Orleans.

In 2018, we will be spending many hours with people like Brenda, as we embark on a new series for NPR called The Keepers — stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, collectors, curators and historians — keepers of the culture and the culture and collections they keep.

We are asking for your support to help create this rich, surprising, timely series about the people and stories behind collecting and protecting our history and culture.

Prince and the Technician

In 1983 Prince hired LA sound technician, Susan Rogers, one of the few women in the industry, to move to Minneapolis and help upgrade his home recording studio as he began work on the album and the movie Purple Rain. Susan, a trained recording technician with no sound engineering experience became the engineer of Purple Rain, Parade, Sign o’ the Times, and all that Prince recorded for the next four years. For those four years, and almost every year after, Prince recorded at least a song a day and they worked together for 24 hours, 36 hours, 96 hours at a stretch, layering and perfecting his music and his hot funky sound. Yesterday we interviewed Susan, who is now a Professor at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, for our upcoming NPR series, The Keepers — about activist archivists, rogue librarians, collectors, curators and historians. It was Susan who started Prince’s massive archive during her time with the legendary artist who died a year today. Here is small smattering of the stories she told that will be heard on The Keepers and our podcast. We thank you Susan. We thank you Prince.