Sneak Peak: Program Notes for Brent Michael Davids' Composition "Black Hills Olowan" | Lakota Music Project Premier

“Black Hills Olowan” is a concert work for American Indian singers and orchestra that honors the Black Hills of South Dakota, and features the Porcupine Singers. In the introductory portions of “Black Hills Olowan,” the singers are integrated with the symphonic instruments, almost as if they are another instrumental section of the orchestra. However, the concluding moments of the work feature the singers as a leading voice, driving the symphony along to its rousing conclusion. The importance of the Black Hills to the original inhabitants of the land is well articulated by Dr. Ronnie Theisz:

“The Black Hills of western South Dakota and Eastern Wyoming known to the Lakota as Paha Sapa (Black Hills) and He Sapa (Black Mountains) hold a revered place in the history and culture especially of the Lakota and Cheyenne nations, but also for others such as the Mandan, Arikara, and Kiowa. For the Lakota, sacred oral tradition has preserved the significance of the Black Hills as “the heart of everything that is.” Many sites in and around the Black Hills still vibrate with geomythological significance. The 19th century confrontation with the expanding United States made the Black Hills into a flashpoint, a place of confrontation, exploitation, and conflict in military, legal, spiritual, economic, environmental, and symbolic terms. The Black Hills was taken from the Lakota in the Act of 1877, a taking found ultimately to be illegal by the United States Supreme Court a century later. The refusal to relinquish their Black Hills, guaranteed by the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, has become a Lakota cause célèbre still today. The intertribal dancing song called Heart Butte Special was originally composed by the Dine singer and composer Arlie Neskahi. The widely known Porcupine Singers on a trip to the Browning Montana celebration in the early 1980s requested permission to perform and record this song which was to become one of their trademark and most popular intertribal songs” (R. D. Theisz).

“Black Hills Olowan” was commissioned by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra for a Native American tour with support of the American Composers Forum and the National Endowment for the Arts.