FLASH n e w s , g o s s i p , a n d i n n u e n d o f r o m a r t / d e s i g n / a r c h i t e c t u r e
Robert Mirabal Music and Myth By Gussie Fauntleroy
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TREND Summer 2013
Robert Mirabal performing at the Waldorf School Christmas Show
team with the New York City-based string quartet, ETHEL. Members of the internationally acclaimed group Dancing Earth, choreographed by Rulan Tangen, will dazzle with indigenous contemporary dance. Yet while spirited and entertaining, the performance offers a message grounded in humility and collective wisdom based on the ancient and continuing ways of living from seed and soil. This wisdom, passed down through generations in the form of stories, is personified in the show as mythological characters that also represent universal archetypes. Pollen Child travels from plant to plant as an aerialist; the Raven Mocker is a Pueblo version of yin/yang; and the character of Drought can also be seen as barrenness of imagination, family, or culture, Mirabal explains. Music
and Myth is “an honoring, a celebration,” the artist says. “And the invitation in all Pueblo prayers is that it’s not just for us, it’s for the world.” Mirabal is the show’s co-executive producer along with Art Fegan, while JoAnn Young of Young Productions, Inc. will produce the performance for television. Robert Mirabal: Music and Myth airs on PBS beginning in March 2014. Tickets for the 90-minute live performance are available through the Santa Fe Opera box office (santafeopera.org). Donation pledges to KNME-TV at certain levels receive thank-you gifts including show tickets, CDs and DVDs containing additional performance material, and an after-show opportunity to meet Mirabal and the cast. Contact KNME at newmexicopbs.org. R
trendmagazineglobal.com
JIM COX
ast fall Robert Mirabal saved 15 bags of cornhusks from the harvest on his Taos Pueblo farm. This summer the worldrenowned Grammy Award–winning musician, dancer, and storyteller is busy designing costumes using those husks and other materials. He’s choreographing dances, composing music, and fleshing out characters from Pueblo mythology. He’s writing poetic narrative, visualizing elements of stage production, and contemplating traditional and contemporary perspectives on what he calls the “agri/culture” of Native peoples who follow the way of corn. The results of all this creative energy will light up the stage at the Santa Fe Opera on the evenings of August 30 and 31 when Robert Mirabal: Music and Myth will be produced and filmed as a PBS special to be broadcast nationwide next spring. “I’m pretty lucky—my whole culture still expresses itself in celebration of seed to earth to cultivation. We have the song of the harvest, the song of the beans, the song of corn,” Mirabal says. Now the 46-year-old multitalented artist is transforming the traditional spirit of those songs, dances, and stories into something inspiring, entertaining, and new. It’s an artistic approach that has characterized his career. For more than two decades Mirabal has created new sounds by fusing his own Native flute-playing with roots and world music traditions ranging from Asian, African, Celtic, and Haitian to hip-hop and contemporary tribal rock. His 2001 PBS special and CD, Music From a Painted Cave, brought national recognition. The two-time Grammy Award winner has been twice named Native American Music Awards Artist of the Year. Music and Myth features Pueblothemed and opera-worthy costumes of Mirabal’s design. His own band will