LOUIS WAYNE BALLARD
Louis Wayne Ballard, or “Honga-no-zhe” meaning “Grand Eagle” in Quapaw, was an American composer who is sometimes dubbed the “Father of Native American Composition.” Born in Devil’s Promenade, Oklahoma, his mother was a member of the Quapaw tribe and his father was a member of the Cherokee tribe of Oklahoma. His Quapaw lineage traced back to a prominent traditional medicine family and his Cherokee lineage to the chief’s line. His mother spoke her native tongue, and Ballard himself was one of the last native speakers of the Quapaw language.
At the age of six, Ballard was sent to the Seneca Indian Training School, one of the now-infamous government operated boarding schools for Native American children living on reservations across the United States. The official mission of these schools was to assimilate these children into white American society and provide them with useful trades. These schools were created after tribes had been forced to resettle all over the country under varying conditions during the 1800’s.
Ballard described the boarding school as a “brainwashing center for young Indians.” He was punished for speaking his native tongue and practicing traditional dances in the school yard which were common institutionalized cultural genocide tactics at boarding schools across the country. After boarding school, Ballard spent several years living on the Quapaw reservation with his grandmother and brother while attending church and local tribal dances. His grandmother encouraged his interest in music and paid for his first piano and voice lessons through the church. He started to flourish towards the end of high school and piano became a constant in his life.
Ballard studied music theory and composition at Oklahoma University, Tulsa University, the College of Santa Fe, and William Jewell College. As a composer, music educator, and music journalist, he was passionate about furthering the understanding and appreciation of indigenous cultures in the United States.
“It is not enough to acknowledge that American Indian music is different from other music. What is needed in America is an awakening and reorienting of our total spiritual and cultural perspective to embrace, understand, and learn from the Aboriginal American what motivated his musical and artistic impulses.”
In 2004, he was a founding member of the First Nations Composer Initiative which included younger Native American composers such as Brent Michael Davids, Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, and Raven Chacon, the winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Music. In February 2007, Ballard passed away at his home in Santa Fe after battling cancer since 2004.
RITMO INDIO
A Study in American Indian Rhythms
In 1969, a commission from the Dorian Woodwind Quintet (funded by the Rockefeller Foundation) led Ballard to compose Ritmo Indio. The score went on to win the Marian Nevins MacDowell Award, a high honor named for one of American’s great arts patrons. Ballard’s central place in the intersection of Native and concert music also led to his appointment around that time as the director of music programs for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Ballard’s “Study in American Indian Rhythms,” as the subtitle defines it, does not attempt to transcribe Native melodies, and even the rhythms are manipulated and filtered through Ballard’s own compositional voice. In The Source, the underlying beat remains constant, but shifting subdivisions make for a supple, unpredictable pulse. The central slow movement, The Soul, assigns the oboe player to switch to the Sioux flageolet (somewhat like a recorder) to play a free-flowing solo marked con alma, or “with soul.” The Dance volleys between two-beat and three-beat measures in a vigorous finale.
Ritmo Indio is dedicated to Dr. Willard Rhodes of Columbia University.
Note by Aaron Grad
SIOUXIANA
Inspirational ideas from the life incident called “Coming of Age” served as the central theme during the conception of this musical work. In traditional tribal cultures of Native American Indians, this coming of age or maturational point in the life of a young man or woman was a precious event which was enacted many times by many people and yet to each person it was always new and strange and frightening….and, moreso, it was inevitable. Here is universal drama wherein mature’s [sic] unrelenting life force would send each young warrior and each maiden to experience the dawning of an imponderable universe and to return with his own view of life….his own vision….his own name….his own identity, and his very being without which life held little meaning.
Those who had passed many winters, the elders, were the keepers of legends and myths for these young expectant gladiators. The ancient story tellers would recite varied tales of WAKONTA or MANITOU, the spirit beings, or brave heroes and reknowned deeds and of other vision quests. Such tales were always new yet always old to the listener who was so very determined to find his own way, only to discover that in the process of self actualization he was really re-emacting [sic] the ancient tales which he in turn would one day recite to other youthful listeners.
Musically, the work is divided into two sections: Part I - “Legends Retold,” Part II - “Vision Quest.” In each section, it is states of being rather than literal programmatic events which are represented in the flow of the musical texture. This texture utilizes stylized motifs drawn from the essence of Plains Indian musical cultures, predominantly Sioux or Dakota, as the only the composer knows them. Hence the title. All themes are original and the listener is advised to not listen for direct quotations or “Indian tunes” as none are used. Also, the composer felt that since the wooden flute was an important part of the indigenous culture, this composition for the medium of woodwind choir was ideally suited for such symbolic presentation of tonal pictures, hopefully, universal in scope.
Note by Louis Ballard
DESERT TRILOGY
The Desert has long been the Mecca for spiritual purification and introspective contemplation for vision seekers of all races of man. Here in the Southwest region of the United States, our own arid and semi-arid lands have provided subsistence for the American Indian tribes for centuries before the coming of the White Man. The plant life has provided food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and even the niceties of everyday life, such as soap, perfume, spices, decorative ornamentations, etc.; and in spite of the incessant struggle for survival, the scarcity of water, there exists a perfect balance of nature, for both flora and fauna. The uniquely indigenous variety of plant life are typically American whose strange and splendid shapes form a magnificent natural architectural splendor, equal in majesty to the Parthenon and the Acropolis.
In addition, the Southwestern desert areas symbolize the enduring beauty and indestructibility of life on this planet.
I. Sagebrush (T’Sah)
This opening section depicts the dark desert before sunrise with its aura of mystery and night silences. Thematically, the entire section is based upon the first three tones of a 12 tone row (2 intervals, minor second and augmented fourth) descending and ascending. Formal structure is “through-composed” in that all development and secondary themes arise out of the germinal idea………With the retiring of the night creatures, last flight of the night owl, there is the awakening of the animal life, which develops into a fleeting, dream-like, ethereal fantasy dance. A more somber mood envelops the atmosphere as the brilliant rays of sunlight flood the desert.
Ancient man believed in the power of this plant to endow a person with wisdom.
II. Yucca (T’ Sah ’Ah ’Zee)
Here is the desert at Mid-Day; radiant and brilliant, fully alive with the exuberance of life forms, inter-related and inter-dependent for subsistence. We hear the stylized rhythms of the Navajo grinding songs and weaving, basket making, and the joy of the Hopi wedding festivity. Formal structure is ABCBA modified to dramatize the implied nature of this plant; also known as the Spanish dagger, for its spiny and visceral qualities.
III. Sagurao (Hosh ‘Nit ‘Sai)
Here is the giant of the desert, foreboding and ominous, other times, regal and lofty, but always all-pervasive in its position of inviolability as lord of the desert. Here on Superstition Mountain, the Giants congregate in profusion, stretching for thousands of miles over the desert terrain. The multifibrotic tendons of the Saguaros manifest themselves in strange, weird, unknowable shapes, as they act out the drama of the precarious balance of nature, hovering between violent death and accrescent life forms. A cosmic force invades the desert and an almost solitary detachment from earth life expresses the mood of the music. Thematically, the section is based upon a harmonic setting of the original theme in Section I, which a strong lyrical dominance thruout [sic], highlighting the use of an authentic Papago Flute in the development section. Formal structure is ABA with coda; the use of shifting rhythms represents the architectural shape of the plants. The work culminates in an Andante Maestoso corresponding to the resurgence of plant and animal life, and the blossoming of the flowers, representing the stability and permanence of the desert life. Man lives his own human experience thru the eternal life of the desert.
Desert Trilogy was commissioned by the ICASALS organization for the 21st Symposium of American Music and Festival of the Arts of the Americas, held at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas.Note by Louis Ballard
Note by Louis Ballard