Filmed at Nordlys Vind, one of Europe’s largest wind farms encroaches upon the traditional homelands of the Sámi. Maneuvering the Apostles is a prompt for a drone camera to fly as close as possible to the windmills of the farm before getting pulled into its blades. The title of the work evokes the expression “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” which speaks to how one debt is acquired to pay off another. In these instances, Indigenous people are forced to sacrifice ancestral lands, longstanding traditions, and their own sovereignty for green energy projects, which are themselves solutions to problems caused by the capitalist and colonialist systems that have sought to eradicate Indigenous peoples. Accompanying the drone footage is a soundtrack of tremolo-affected bird recordings, acknowledging the trespass of the windmills into the spaces of our vertical relations.
For Four is a composition in the form of a canon, where four singers are facing the cardinal directions in a valley that was created by a sudden disruption. Each singer slowly rotates while scanning the horizon line, interpreting its contour as a melodic line. For Four (Caldera) is a video installation showing four women standing on a volcanic hollow in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, near the site of Los Alamos National Laboratory where the atomic bomb was developed. For Four (River Valley) is a video installation featuring joikers singing to the four compass points in Skibotn/Ivgubahta, in northernmost Norway/Sápmi, a valley formed by the damming of upstream rivers.
Vertical Neighbors is a composition for two pairs of the same brass horn instrument, presented on the occasion of Chacon’s solo exhibition at Swiss Institute NYC, A Worm’s Eye View from a Bird’s Beak. The score exists as a set of murals, visible to one or more musicians on the ground and their counterparts in an elevated position. A performance of this composition becomes an acknowledgement of vertical orientations as temporal relationships, aligning past and future knowledge.
Support for Vertical Neighbors is provided by the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation. Premiere performance by TILT Brass (Hugo Moreno, Nate Wooley — trumpet, Jen Baker, Chris McIntyre — trombone)
As part of the touring exhibition Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration, Arizona, Raven Chacon debuted a new sound work on Alcatraz Island on November 6, 2022. The work is a sonic meditation on the histories of Alcatraz, including and its occupation for nineteen months beginning in November 1969 by the group Indians of All Tribes to protest the unjust treatment of Indigenous people by the U.S. government. The 50-minute performance draws upon many sources, including archival recordings of Radio Free Alcatraz, in which John Trudell would broadcast news of the occupation from the island every weeknight for most of the first year of the protest.
Field Recordings / Sound Installation Digital audio file 12 minutes 8 secs [looped]
Silent Choir (2017) captures a moment at the Oceti Sakowin camp, near Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota during the 2016–17 No Dakota Access Pipeline (NoDAPL) Resistance. The piece documents the silent protest of hundreds of water protectors and land defenders, led by Indigenous women, staring down the armed police sent to suppress the gathering. The sonic trace not only describes what can be sensed but also what may be imagined, and amplifies the echo of a movement that stood unshakable — in strategic unity and prayer — maintaining its peaceful resistance through nonviolence.
Three-channel sound and video installation 6 minutes 50 seconds, looped
In this series of three videos, American Indian women sing the history of a landscape including its present, past, and future where a conflict, displacement or massacre of their tribe took place. The songs reference the Navajo Long Walk, the Trail of Tears, and resulting drownings in the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers, and the removal of Seminole people from their homelands. These songs of resistance, with only a snare drum as accompaniment, become a sonic testimony, an acknowledgement of shared survival, and a healing call in the mother tongues.
Sung by Sage Bond (Diné) Sung by Jehnean Washington (Yuchi) Sung by Mary Ann Emarthle (Seminole)
Commissioned by COUSIN Collective. Camera by D.E. Hyde.
For Zitkála-Šá (For Laura Ortman), 2017 For Zitkála-Šá (For Barbara Croall), 2018 For Zitkála-Šá (For Suzanne Kite), 2018 For Zitkála-Šá (For Cheryl L’Hirondelle), 2018 For Zitkála-Šá (For Autumn Chacon), 2019 For Zitkála-Šá (For Carmina Escobar), 2019 For Zitkála-Šá (For Ange Loft), 2019 For Zitkála-Šá (For Heidi Senungetuk), 2019 For Zitkála-Šá (For Olivia Shortt), 2019 For Zitkála-Šá (For Jacqueline Wilson), 2019 For Zitkála-Šá (For Joy Harjo), 2020 For Zitkála-Šá (For Candice Hopkins), 2020
For Zitkála-Šá is a series of twelve graphic scores dedicated to contemporary American Indian, First Nations, and Mestiza women working in music performance, composition, and sound art. The series as a whole is a dedication to the Yankton Dakota composer and musician Zitkála-Šá, (1876–1938) whose work also included writing poetry, fiction, and political essays, teaching, community organizing, and founding the National Council of the American Indian. Several of her works chronicled her early struggles with identity; as an orator, many of her speeches brought awareness to the systemic oppression of Native people. As a composer and musician, Zitkála-Šá taught violin, later writing the libretto and songs for The Sun Dance Opera (1913), the first American Indian opera.
The scores function as both transcriptive portraits of the contemporary Indigenous women artists and how they navigate the twenty-first century. The scores draw on a range of symbols, including Western music notation, tribal geometries, and numerology, among more ambiguous designs.
Ange Loft, Carmina Escobar, and Laura Ortman perform their scores from For Zitkála-Šá at the Whitney Biennial, 2022: Quiet As It’s Kept. Photos by Paula Court.
Voiceless Mass is a large ensemble work commissioned by WI Conference of the United Church of Christ, Plymouth Church UCC, and Present Music, and was composed specifically for the Nichols & Simpson organ at The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but can be performed in any space of worship with high ceilings and pipe organ.
This work considers the spaces in which we gather, the history of access of these spaces, and the land upon which these buildings sit. Though ‘mass’ is referenced in the title, the piece contains no audible singing voices, instead using the openness of the large space to intone the constricted intervals of the wind and string instruments. In exploiting the architecture of the cathedral, Voiceless Mass considers the futility of giving voice to the voiceless, when ceding space is never an option for those in power.
These three videos document collaborative performances with fellow Indigenous musicians from 2020 to 2022. In each video, the performances take place on the West Mesa outside of Albuquerque, in view of the three dormant volcanoes that border the city. In the first video, Chacon is joined by Candice Hopkins, a Carcross/Tagish First Nation curator and writer, both of whom don handmade costumes. The performance was inspired by a Sámi drum inscribed with a landscape that depicts the setting of the ritual and notates the music to be played.
The second video captures a pandemic-era collaboration with Rob Thorne, a Ngāti Tumutumu/Tainui composer and anthropologist, who played as the sun rose near his home in Oruaiti, Aotearoa (New Zealand), while Chacon did the same as the sun set in New Mexico, each capturing his perspective on video.
The third video documents a collaboration between Chacon and Cannupa Hanska Luger, an artist of the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Lakota tribes; Chacon manipulates dysfunctional electronics from his collection and Hanska Luger plays his own instrument-esque ceramic sculptures, with the musicality of the performance reflected in the performers’ gestures and sense of attunement, as much as in the liminal sounds produced.
Raven Chacon and Candice Hopkins Rift Transcription (2020) Digital video with sound, 10 min. 7 sec. Raven Chacon – violin Candice Hopkins – drum D.E. Hyde – Camera Originally commissioned by Joar Nango
Raven Chacon and Rob Thorne Earth Mother / Father Sky (2021) Digital video with sound, 30 min. 18 sec. Raven Chacon – whistles, electronics, camera Rob Thorne (Ngāti Tumutumu / Tainui) – pūtōrino, kōauau toroa, pahū kōhatu, camera Originally commissioned by ISSUE Project Room
Raven Chacon and Cannupa Hanska Luger Watȟéča :: Ch’iyáán Yiskáago (2022) Digital video with sound, 21 min. 51 sec. Raven Chacon – voice, bells, electronics, editing Cannupa Hanska Luger – ceramic calls, bowls D.E. Hyde – Camera Ginger Dunnill – Camera Laura Ortman – on-site audio recording Originally commissioned by 6 Moons Indigenous Concert Series
Score / Sound Installation / Performance: 13 performers, 13 wind chimes, equally divided within an octave.
Thirteen chimes are hand-cut and tuned to thirteen equal-distanced pitches within the 12-note Western equal-tempered octave. The chimes are sounded in a procession which asks the thirteen performers to self-organize themselves in a sequence, while individually and collectively becoming familiar with the tones of the chimes they carry. Music for 13 Paths challenges the spatial organization of gridded neighborhoods with an intervention into the organizing systems of music.
Commissioned by Gallery TPW in partnership with Trinity Square Video and imagineNATIVE. Music for 13 Paths was part of The Parkette Projects curated by Shani K Parsons. Performance in Toronto, Treaty 13, on October 16th, 2021.
Second performance April 15, 2023, in St. Louis, Missouri presented by Counterpublic.
