The Study of Racialism

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R. Carlos Nakai Jazz Quartet

THE QUARTET:

Will Clipman - A "Saamoke" (mixed blood of Saami and Cherokee heritage) Will began drumming at the age of three and playing professionally at the age of fourteen. His discography includes over fifty recordings, fifteen of those for the world's leading Native American music label Canyon Records, among which is the 2001 GRAMMY Finalist In A Distant Place, and three solo projects on his Bone Fire Music label. When he isn't making big medicine performing, touring and recording with the R. Carlos Nakai Quartet, the Nakai-Eaton-Clipman Trio, the William Eaton Ensemble or the Conrads, playing everything from acoustic world chamber jazz to electric blues rock to acoustic ethnic fusion, Will also performs a solo show called Global Village Musical Story Theater, an interdisciplinary synthesis that combines his original masks and mythopoetic story-telling with a multicultural soundscape of indigenous musical instruments.

Amo Chip Dabney - Chip's first music experiences included the New Jersey State Boy's Symphony Choir and the Newark School for the Performing Arts in both vocal and instrumental music studies. The music of Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinal, Cannon Ball Adderley, Dave Holland, Dollar Brand, and the Arts Ensemble of Chicago are among his early listening influences. A master of many music styles, Chip has performed with African, world-beat, reggae, R and B, and jazz bands and has worked with Sun Ra and his Omniverse Arkestra, O.J. Ekemode and the Nigerian All-Stars, Zydeco's Queen Ida and the avant garde ensemble, and the Rova Saxophone Quartet. He has appeared on over twenty-one recordings and has released two albums of original compositions, So Many Ways, and Escape from Newark on his label MicroChip.

R. Carlos Nakai - of Navajo-Ute heritage, is regarded as the world's premiere performer of the native American flute. Nakai was given a traditional cedar wood flute as a gift and challenged to see what he could do with it. In the '70's, RC was influenced to work with the native American flute in contemporary music expressions by early native American composers, performers and by direct encouragement at the World Music Seminar at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY. In 1983 his first album, Changes, was released by Canyon Records Productions and is followed by over thirty-five more recordings. He was awarded the Arizona Governor's Art Award in 1992. His GRAMMY Finalist awards in the New Age category include Fourth World, In a Distant Place, Inside Monument Valley, Inner Voices, and Ancestral Voices, all on the Canyon Records label. Earth Spirit and Canyon Trilogy are RIAA Certified Gold Records. Nakai has earned a BS in Education at Northern Arizona University, an MA in American Indian Studies from the University of Arizona, and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters by Northern Arizona University. Nakai sees his role as a performer of the traditional flute not only to reiterate traditional sounds but to find new avenues of _expression for the instrument in the traditional and contemporary indigenous cultures of the Americas.

Mary Redhouse - of the Navajo tribe, has established a career in southern Arizona as a performer, composer and educator. She is a versatile jazz vocalist and calls her exploratory style "eco-spiritual" because it incorporates bird calls, animal cries, multi-octave scat lines, and native chants. Mary was introduced to jazz in grade school by Beatrice Parker, a beatnik and school librarian who played jazz albums while Mary shelved books. Although she listened to the classic jazz vocalists, Mary cites instrumentalists John Coltrane, Charlie Mingus, Thelonius Monk, Eric Dolphy, Miles Davis, Roland Kirk, Ornette Coleman, and Dave Holland as some of her main influences. She has toured for the Arizona Commission on the Arts and has opened for Geri Allen, Marlena Shaw and Jane Ira Bloom. In 1994 she collaborated with critically acclaimed bassist Michael Formanek and guitarist John Stowell and presented A NEW WIND: Native American Vocal Jazz Explorations (a collection of her original intertribals for a jazz group). Mary herself performs on the William Eaton ensemble's Naked In Eureka and on the Redhouse family's Urban Indian, both released by Canyon Records.

More On Nakai: To become the world's premier Native American flutist, R. Carlos Nakai had to rely more on research and innovation and less on his Navajo-Ute heritage. While Nakai may not have been "born to the flute," it was curiosity about his heritage that led him to it. During the late 1960s while researching American Indian music and traditional instruments, the wooden flute piqued Nakai's interest, but it wasn't until 1972 that he took it up seriously. Prior to that Nakai had devoted his musical energies to classical training on the cornet and trumpet. Part of Nakai's philosophy is to ensure that the native flute does not become a "museum piece" of a bygone culture. Through his original compositions and other musical collaborations, Nakai intends to show the instrument's versatility and capabilities. Over the past two decades, Nakai has melded his classical training with his expertise on the cedar flute to form a complex, sophisticated sound that not only reveals the flute's uniqueness, but covers the spectrum of musical genres: jazz ensembles, piano and guitar collaborations, and the concert hall. A prolific musician and composer, he has 27 albums in commercial distribution, including 18 releases on the Canyon Records label. Just counting his Canyon titles, Nakai recently surpassed the 2,000,000 units sold worldwide. He was a 1994 Grammy Award finalist for "Best Traditional Folk Album". He has written and performed scores for film and television including selections for the National Park Service, Fox Television, the Discovery Channel, IMAX, the National Geographic Society and many commercial productions. In 1992, Nakai received the Governor of Arizona's Arts Award, the second Native American so honored. In 1994, Nakai was conferred with an honorary doctorate by Northern Arizona University and the Arizona Board of Regents for his "exceptional achievements and contributions to humankind." And when he is not recording, composing or researching, 70 to 80 percent of the year is spent touring throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan performing and lecturing on Native American culture and philosophy. Nakai wouldn't have it any other way. "...We were put on the earth to experience life in its totality. And if you're not doing that, you're essentially wasting your time."

For more information on this great music go to: www.rcarlosnakai.com

THE R. CARLOS NAKAI QUARTET

A Band of Native Americans