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Music festival piece<br>part of healing process

GCNP — For those who saw “Guardians of the Grand Canyon” during the Grand Canyon Music Festival, the inclusion of the Ram Dance was a special and rare occurrence.

Brent Michael Davids, who composed the piece after being commissioned by the American Composers Forum and the National Endowment for the Arts as part of the nationwide Continental

Brent Michael Davids, who composed ‘Guardians of the Grand Canyon,’ performs for reservation children.

Harmony project, said it gave the Havasupai a voice.

“I wanted to compose about the people of the Canyon,” Davids said about the piece. “The Canyon was once the home of the Havasupai. They lived here for thousands of years before it was officially taken away by the United States. They had a long battle even to get a western part of the Canyon to continue their existence.”

Davids said the relationship between the federal government and the tribe has been a black eye, a sore spot for the Havasupai.

“Now there’s some healing between the Havasupai and the United States,” Davids said. “There’s some kind of beginning steps toward reconciliation. I still think it’s out of balance. It won’t be balanced until things are integrated.”

The Havasupai dancers called Guardians of the Grand Canyon were incorporated into Davids’ Continental Harmony performance. Davids called it “a musical first because they agreed to do a sacred ceremony in the middle of a piece of chamber music.”

“J.T. Reynolds (Grand Canyon National Park deputy superintendent) came up afterward and said it was amazing,” Davids said. “He thought he’d never see a sacred Ram Dance performed by the Havasupai.”

Davids really wanted to focus on these natives of the Canyon. In the past, he said, other references to the Canyon have been of a geographical nature, not getting into those who lived here.

“I felt it was my purpose to let the people of the Canyon speak,” Davids said.

“Guardians of the Grand Canyon” was a sold-out show on the final day of the music festival. It debuted last summer on the Fourth of July during the Continental Harmony celebration.

In the piece, Davids used traditional Native American instruments that he designed, including flutes may of quartz crystal.

Davids, who himself is a member of the Mahican Nation, said a void was filled with the piece.

“The work is designed to create a sense of the vast spaces in the Canyon and to create the illusion of hearing the music from within its immense walls,” he said.

Students at Grand Canyon and on the Hopi and Navajo reservations had the opportunity to experience “Guardians of the Grand Canyon” for themselves. Davids and other musicians performed for students in a series of concerts in the classroom after the music festival’s conclusion.


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