‘KEEPING ORAL TRADITION ALIVE’
Podcast explores music education, composition on Navajo, Hopi reservations
Michael Begay is used to a life on the road. As the Diné composer travels through the Navajo and Hopi Nations, Begay hopes to make a change through music.
He works with the Native American Composers Apprenticeship Project, an outreach program of the Grand Canyon Music Festival.
It is dedicated to teaching Native American young people to compose concert music.
Each year, young musicians work with a Native American composer and a string quartet in residence in partnership with their school’s music program.
Begay’s project with the students is a podcast called “Original Score.”
Begay says the podcast aims to increase visibility and attention for music education in young Native peoples’ communities and share with the wider world their talent and stories.
“The program was interested in how students composed their work on the Hopi and Navajo reservations,” Begay says. “We started to record in February for the podcast.”
Then the pandemic hit, and the work began to slow.
Begay kept finding ways to move forward because he wanted to share the uplifting stories of resilience from these communities.
“I was planning on traveling all over the reservation,” he says. “The first couple podcasts are in-person interviews. After that, I had to switch to a lot of pieces done on Zoom. There’s been a learning curve. The most important thing was getting good quality audio.”
As Begay moved forward with the podcast, he discovered different ways to get the episode done.
He says one of the biggest problems was dealing with the lack of technology on the reservations.
“It needs a big upgrade,” he says. “That’s one of the big challenges: getting the students the technology out there.”
Begay finds each story interesting. “It’s because the students are giving me a behind-the-scenes look at the compositions,” he says. “Sometimes the stories are about the people on the land. Sometimes the compositions are about the city, and sometimes it’s a contrast. Each story is one of the people and the land. What’s cool about the podcast is it’s keeping the oral tradition alive of storytelling and passing knowledge.”
“Original Score” can be listened to at mixcloud.com/originalscore. Begay says there will be six episodes released for the first season.