[music]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you as well if you've donated during our winter pledge drive, your support keeps programming like All Of It on the air, so thank you. Here's what's coming up today. We're going to talk with the director of a new documentary that explores the psychological impact of space travel. Joining that conversation will be an actual astronaut. Really looking forward to it.

We'll also speak with Ashley Boyd, the author of Saucy: 50 Recipes for Drizzly, Dunk-able, Go-To Sauces to Elevate Everyday Meals. We'll enter into a spice haze and talk about the movie Dune 2. That's the plan. Let's get this hour started with some live music right here in Studio 5.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It. I'm Kousha Navidar filling in for Alison Stewart. Tonight through Saturday, Lincoln Center will host the world premiere of an orchestral piece by Chickasaw composer Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic. The piece is called Pisachi, a Chickasaw word that translates to reveal and draws on Hopi and Pueblo music and rhythms.

On Tuesday, Carnegie Hall will host the New York premiere of Clans, another piece by Tate as part of their American Composers Orchestra concert. Jerod Tate is a 2024 United States artist, a 2022 Chickasaw Hall of Fame inductee, and a 2021 cultural ambassador for the US Department of State. He joins me now in the studio at the piano to talk about his work and to maybe bless us with some music. Jerod, welcome to All Of It.

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Chikmaa! [Alabama greetings] [Foreign language] Hello, everyone. My name is Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate. I am a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma and I am a professional classical composer. It's really nice to be here. What a pleasure. [laughs]

Kousha Navidar: It's nice to have you. Maybe we'll start with a little intro and some music. What are we going to hear?

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Absolutely. I'd like to start out with [unintelligible 00:02:29] Chickasaw, and I'm guessing that a lot of New Yorkers are not necessarily familiar with my tribe. We're originally from the southeastern part of the United States, and then we were removed to Oklahoma in the 1830s. I'd like to start out with a song, just an ancient song so people get to know my traditional music really quick. This is a traditional Chickasaw Garfish dance song that dates back thousands of years that I learned from my cousin, Bynum. I'd like to sing that for you.

[MUSIC - Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Garfish Dance]

Kousha Navidar: Beautiful. Thank you. For listeners right now, Jerod has a rattle in his hand. Can you explain what that instrument is that you're using?

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Yes. Our traditional percussion instrument is the turtle rattle. Actually, it's really, really common to most Woodland American Indians historically. That's our sound is shell shaking and turtle rattles. A lot of people are familiar with the powwow drum that's more in the West. That's our percussion instrument. It's a very signature sound that we have.

Kousha Navidar: Before the mics went on, you and I were talking about our respective names, and I want to dive into that a little bit for listeners. It's really interesting. Your middle name, Impichchaachaaha'.

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Yes.

Kousha Navidar: In your bio, it says that it means high corncrib. Can you talk about your name a little bit?

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Absolutely. Chickasaws, we historically have house names, which are very much like surnames. I am from the house of Impichchaachaaha', almost like Van Beethoven, he's from the house of Beethoven. Impichchaachaaha' means it's a raised corn silo. It's like literally a raised corn hut, a thatched hut that's raised off the ground by about 6 feet poles.

It's functional, it's used to store vegetables and keep them from critters. We would grease the poles so the squirrels wouldn't make it up and that kind of thing, but that's an Impichchaachaaha' is a high corn crib. A lot of our house names are named after environmental items like that that would be present back in the villages and back in the day.

Kousha Navidar: Why is it important to you to include that explanation, even in the bio on your website?

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Oh, because that's who I am. Also, it's a great conversation starter. We were talking about this earlier about our names and how to pronounce them. Everybody's got their own name and their own history behind their name, and I believe that all names from all cultures are beautiful and have history that's worth talking about, and so, I really love talking about other people's names, not just my own.

I'm also of the Shawi' clan, the Shawi' Iksa', which is our Raccoon Clan. We have clans that are animal clans and then we have clan names and house names in our tribes. I just love talking about that so that people learn stuff.

Kousha Navidar: Let's talk a little bit about the New York Philharmonic and your piece, Pisachi. The New York Philharmonic tonight is going to premiere an orchestral version of Pisachi. The piece was originally commissioned to be accompanied by a visual slideshow, right?

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Correct, yes. Ethel here, your quartet in New York City commissioned that work along with about five other works by five other composers to be a part of a collage and evening performance that went to a certain slideshow that was from the '70s that was photographs of America. I was asked to focus on the American Southwest.

Ethel and I met working at an American Indian composition program at the Grand Canyon Music Festival with the Hopi and Navajo kids down in the Tuba City area. That's how we met. They were feeling nostalgic and asked me to compose a work that was dedicated to my tribal cousins from the Southwestern part of the United States.

Kousha Navidar: Can you talk a little bit more about where the piece came from? Where were you when you wrote that, got the idea for it?

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Yes, absolutely. I was thinking about friends that I have all over Indian country, and in particular, a Taoist friend of mine named James Lujan came to mind. He passed a little early. He was a great artist. I was just feeling nostalgic about him, and I just wanted to focus on melodies to influence the work that I was writing. It was very much based on my experience with James.

Also, just the people that I've been working with at the Grand Canyon Music Festival Composition Program. All my feels were just coming together about that. There's a particular melody that I had created that's in the style, and so I can sing that for you how it sounds traditionally, and then how I transform that and walk you through that if you'd like.

Kousha Navidar: I'd love that. Yes.

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Sure. Again, I'm thinking about my friends, I'm thinking about being back in that area, and the nostalgia I had teaching the kids, and the brilliant music they were coming up, with all that beautifulness that comes out in my nostalgic memory of everybody. Just a little precursor, I do this often. It's like, I will compose works for other tribes in homage to my cousin tribes.

Right now, I'm composing a work in the Shawnee language. It's dedicated to my Shawnee friends and people. That's something I'm doing right now that will be sung in the Shawnee language itself. I really enjoyed doing this in my profession. This melody that I'm working with, will be sung more in a traditional style like this.

[music]

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Now, I'm feeling nostalgic. I'm putting the melody into almost like a mist or a haze of the past or something. I'm just thinking about people I care about. In the orchestra, what I have is I have the strings playing these pulse harmonics appear, and then the melody comes in a very, very high viola. Actually, this was because Ralph Farris is the violist for Ethel, and I was thinking of Ralph, and I wanted him to have this melody very high.

[piano sound] That's how the work begins. Anybody who goes to the concert will hear that very beginning with the Philharmonic. Of course, I was in rehearsal this morning and oh gosh, that's so beautiful the way they're just amazing. It's really neat to have a string orchestra piece to focus on the strings only. There's a certain focus that goes with that. I get to indulge in just the string sound of the New York Philharmonic, and that's a special thing to be able to do that.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. Is there any more Pisachi that you could share with us?

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Absolutely. What happens, of course, now, I happen to be a very romantic and dramatic style composer, and so, that's me feeling very nostalgic and thinking as a memory. We have to come up with a Hollywood moment.

[laughter]

[music]

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: That part appears towards the end and the fifth section of the work, and I divided the work into what I call epitomes. This piece is literally a quasi-theme in variations split into six different sections. I do all the nerdy composer things where I transform the melody and create different textures and environments for the same tune.

Kousha Navidar: Then add in the arpeggios when you need the Hollywood moment.

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Of course. Absolutely. You got to have this. I will absolutely be on the sleeve. When we were in rehearsal today, this whole thing right here is the cellos. They happen to be playing Scheherazade this evening as well. There's a very similar moment in a Scheherazade like that with the [unintelligible 00:12:30] playing these arpeggios. I told him today, I said, "I really need to pull in a hyper Scheherazade moment with that," because I wanted the cellos to be very, very present in that particular part. When I was coaching them in the rehearsal today, I was telling them, I just said, "Pull out your Scheherazade chops on that."

Kousha Navidar: Invoke.

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Exactly and invoke that. All composers are influenced by all kinds of music. I'm absolutely just pinching myself that I get to have a work of mine played next to a great piece of repertoire like Scheherazade. I'm feeling quite privileged today.

Kousha Navidar: It reminds me of a quote that I had in my back pocket here. You once said in classical composition, "I use the wonderfully flexible and colorful orchestral tools to express my experience as a Chickasaw person." Can you talk a little bit about flexibility? What do you mean about that in classical music?

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Well, absolutely. I'll tell you, let's compare it to all of the arts. I have other American Indian colleagues in different genres of art. For instance, our third-time poet laureate for the United States of America is Joy Harjo. She's a good friend of mine, and she's a Muscogee poet from Oklahoma. Here Joy is indulging in these beautiful tools of a book of poetry and the English language.

None of those are aboriginal to our cultures and yet she's using those as modern tools to Indian country to express her identity and feelings as a Muscogee person beautifully. Because those tools are amazing. Poetry is not traditional to any of our cultures. Actually, our language being written down is only about 100 years old now. I'm doing the same thing with the tools of highly developed classical instruments that can create practically any color or anything in the world.

Look, we're all experts of modern music created by the orchestral genre because we all go to movies. Today, movies contain every possible modern technique of orchestral writing ever. Everybody is attuned to that modern approach that composers can use. It's like the symphonic orchestra is just so cool. You can't beat it. It's got to be in movies just because it's so awesome.

Another really good example of this is another friend of mine, Sterlin Harjo, who's also Muscogee from Oklahoma, is a very famous filmmaker. He's made a claim to fame with Reservation Dogs on Netflix, a lot of people are enjoying right now. Well, here, Sterlin is expressing very deep feelings about being a Muscogee person from Oklahoma in the medium of film, which is not aboriginal to any culture around the world. Film is brand new to humanity.

If you look at how much people are just diving in and expressing their-- There's so much identity being expressed in film right now, it's really quite daunting. As humans, everybody's diving into it. Again, that's an extreme example that's not aboriginal to anywhere. Honestly, I'm just part of the party where it's like I can choose different ways to express who I am as a Chickasaw person with all the modern materials in the world.

Kousha Navidar: I just want to throw this out for listeners right now, if you're interested, we've had Sterlin Harjo on the show to talk about Reservation Dogs. Jerod, I want to dive into that a little bit. You said to express yourself as a Chickasaw person. For the music theory nerds out there, and I'm genuinely inte-- where is the overlap between Western classical music and the music of the Chickasaw? How do you balance the two or where do you find the harmony?

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: I'll tell you, it's really not as mysterious or exotic as I think a lot of people may realize. Composers throughout history have been focused on their ethnic and national identities and classical music for a very, very long time. The distinction I think of is between our folk art and general fine art. We have our folk art music. I was singing you the Garfish Dance song earlier. That's an art form in and of itself and it's music.

Look, you could hear the scale. Anybody's actually listening to that could hear that there was major minor modes being alternated in that song itself. We can apply music analysis to any music around the world no matter what. It just happens to be that, what we call western classical music right now became its own thing in the world. We're misled because Western fine art isn't relegated to one-time zone that has Paris and London in it.

The history of Western art in general is very, very robust and has great origins in Northern Africa and the Middle East, actually, before it even came to Europe. You think of all the Greek modes and everything like that. Well, that was way before classical music existed and it is the foundation of it, in fact. I say all this because that was this anomaly evolution in the world of humanity.

As it grew, the fine arts like that, and not just in music, but in painting and choreography and fashion, all kinds of aspects of art, it asked and asks people to bring in their individual identity. As it started to morph around to France, well, there was a French sound and there was an Italian sound. Then there became this heavy Russian sound, which was very deliberate. Then as it's made its way across the globe even further, well, Tōru Takemitsu is an incredible Japanese symphonic composer.

You couldn't be more Japanese than Tōru Takemitsu in the symphonic orchestra. You couldn't be more French than Debussy. It's all that French melody that traditional French folk melodies all over Debussy's music. Of course, the Russian composers are great examples of that. Tchaikovsky is a real hero of mine because he brings in that total Russian ethnic identity. He also celebrates his neighbors, his cousins from around his original culture. I'm very inspired by that. Bartók did the same thing with his own people.

He became an ethnomusicologist of his own people. He was a totally classically trained conservatory pianist. His first works sounded just like Franz's list. Then he was like, "You know what? I'm looking somewhere else." He went, got that wax roll recorder, went to his own villages and recorded the music of his own people and decided to notate it in a very deliberate way that nobody has done before, and created an entire new ethos that became a signature Hungarian sound. Unbelievable.

I'm getting chills talking about this because of his passion. What he did is he utilized this beautiful training and this tool of this incredibly developed system of classical instruments and music that was developed out of what I was just explaining. He incorporates that into his own folk music and there's no conflict. Zero. He's just marrying all of who he is at the exact same time. That's how I feel.

I'm a Chickasaw person and I'm a classically trained pianist. It's all music. Science does the same thing. It's like, there's all kinds of crossover between chemistry and physics and astrophysics, I mean all kinds of-- there's all this fluidity between the different disciplines of the sciences. They're used at will, depending on what the scientist needs to do or what they need to work on. They will incorporate all kinds of aspects of the sciences that they know that are in different fields.

Kousha Navidar: It's so fascinating, we've got less than a minute left which is wonderful. It was such a dense, beautiful idea in that minute. As people go and listen to you, Lincoln Center. Next couple of days Carnegie Hall on Tuesday. In 20 seconds or less, what do you hope that they take from all of that history and from your own representation?

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: I hope they find a joyous sense of discovery in Indian country and the modernization of fine art that exists in Indian Country and all the genres. It's a real, real joy and so I just hope people feel licensed to discover that.

Kousha Navidar: Was there one specific way that you hope that they will discover that? Something they can listen for or something that a little Easter egg for people to think of?

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: We have a beautiful thing called the Internet. You can look up any tribe, style, and learn about different tribes, especially within your region of New York. You could do that yourself. You can learn on the internet about all kinds of modern American Indian arts.

Kousha Navidar: That's wonderful. Jerod, thank you so much for joining us and for that beautiful music. I really appreciate it.

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: I really appreciate it. [foreign language] everyone.

Kousha Navidar: Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate is performing at the Lincoln Center tonight, tomorrow, and Saturday. The New York premiere of Clans is going to be at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday the 31st. Thank you again.

Jerod Impichcha̱achaaha' Tate: Thank you so much.

[00:21:05]