Module 5: Great Blue Heron, Arvel Bird

Title: Great Blue Heron

Performer: Arvel Bird (see his bio here)

Culture or Origin: self-proclaimed: a fusion of Celtic and Native American music

Orchestration: It sounds like there is a pre-recorded accompaniment track that he is playing along with him that contains most of a full orchestra (I hear strings for sure), bass guitar, and drum set, as well as piano in a few parts.  He plays the flute and then switches to the violin about 3 minutes in and then switches back at the end. There is a live person playing a drum during some parts, but since the camera doesn't pan much, I can't tell about anyone else.

Since my focus for my curriculum project is Native American music, I have been noticing in my research that a lot of Native American is fused with other musical styles. For this week, since we are discussing creativity, I chose Arvel Bird's video of Great Blue Heron. I think his style of music is wonderfully creative since it is composition that fuses two styles of music that are generally fairly distinct from one another. In watching this video, it becomes clear that Celtic music is closely related in several ways (harmonically, melodically, ornamentation, etc) to Native American flute music. Bird is a classically trained violinist, which is evident when he plays his very decorated violin.  Creatively, I think he demonstrates great skill because in he clearly understands the principles of both Celtic and Native American musics well enough to pick and choose elements to add to his compositions. I found this video very enjoyable, and it prompted me to explore his website and other videos to hear some more of his music.

An interesting thing about him is that he settled on Celtic and Native American music because those are his roots (as mentioned in the bio in the link above) even though he studied a great variety of music. I think this makes his music truly American. I know as a "mutt" of Caucasian cultures, I find myself struggling to choose which of my roots I should cling to.  I think it is especially beautifully that he is able to find his own personal sound and expression by combining his primary ancestral roots into one sound, just like he is one person from many different roots.