Native American music – some of which has never been performed in a concert setting – filled the sanctuary of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church on March 5.
The inaugural First Nations Choral Festival features works by Indigenous composers, both traditional and modern.
Among the more than 700 people in attendance was Bishop David Wilson, who delivered the invocation. Wilson, a member of the Choctaw Nation, was the first Native American elected as an episcopal leader.
The 90-minute concert was the recital by Mary Young, who is now in her third year of her doctoral program in choral conducting at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
“I started researching Native American music about three years ago and focused on choral music because that’s my area of expertise,” Young, a native of Rochester, N.Y., of non-Native descent, said before the concert.
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“A lot of people are under the impression that Native American music doesn’t exist or shouldn’t exist, and I was excited to find some composers who write art in that form, and they support presenting it in that form,” she added. “So I applied for a grant, got the grant, commissioned a Native American composer and turned it into what you see tonight.”
Composers from the Lakota, Cherokee, Oglala, Cree and Oji-Cree nations were among those featured.
The choirs performing were the UNL University Men’s Chorus, all collegiate choirs, choirs, University Singers and Chamber Choir, as well as choirs from Standing Bear High School in Lincoln, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Lincoln North Star High School and St. Paul UMC.
Several of the choirs were conducted by Young, who told the audience that the evening was a different showcase for local music.
“Native Americans don’t organize into choirs,” she said.
The commissioned piece was by William Linthicum-Blackhorse, a Latino-Lakota-Anglo composer who told the audience that he was adopted by a non-Native family who ostracized him because he was gay. He returned to his birth family, which accepted his sexuality.
“Art makes us truly alive,” Linthicum-Blackhorse said. “And that’s why we keep coming back to them.”
He tried to trace the roots of some of the music for the audience.
“Some of these songs are so old we don’t know where they started,” Linthicum-Blackhorse said.
Aliyah American Horse, the 2023-24 Nebraska Youth Poet Laureate, performed several pieces. Native American artist Sarah Rowe’s work was featured both in a gallery at the back of the sanctuary and projected on the walls during performances.
Young said she gained greater insight through her studies.
“Every tribe is incredibly different,” she said. “We tend to paint with broad brushes, and I learned that tribes have languages that are more different from each other than Mandarin is from English. You have to treat the music of each tribe incredibly differently.”
Bishop Wilson, who paused a conference cabinet meeting in Topeka to attend the performance, along with the Rev. Dr. Nancy Tomlinson, superintendent of the Blue River District; and the Rev. Stephanie Alschwede, superintendent of the Missouri River District, said he already knew the history of some of the music, but learned a lot more during the performance.
“It’s just an amazing night, much bigger than I thought it would be,” he said. “It has been my joy to connect with local communities across the state of Nebraska and see the incredible talent throughout Lincoln. Incredible.”
The bishop was among those cheering on the performers and Young.
“It’s incredibly surreal, I’m so proud and so excited,” Young said before the concert. “I hope it becomes an annual thing.”
