Please tell us a bit about your current recording release, tour plans, and your hopes for your current projects.
The new release, Winding Through the Milky Way, will be officially on its way in September. This is the realization of what I was working through in Native Joy for Real. In Native Joy I was stretching out, finding unique ways to express a cross between the poetry, music, and more direct incorporation of indigenous forms and ideas. I threw everything in together. I was experimenting. I believe that the new album is a fruition of that beginning sowed in Native Joy. I had an excellent producer in Larry Mitchell. The tour plans are as usual, which is usually in and out. Many of the tunes are songs that are part of one of my new projects, a one-woman-show with a band: Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light. The first reading with a band happened last December in New York City at the Public Theater. The second at the culmination of a Native playwrights’ workshop set up by Native Voices at the Autry, in Los Angeles, a few weeks ago. Native Voices is going to produce the play for a March/April 2009 run in Los Angeles.
You’ve successfully explored and mastered several genres: print poetry, spoken word, poetry with music, song and, very notably, pure music, especially with your highly praised and demanding sax playing. Where do you see the coexistence and synthesis of these approaches taking your art? Do you enjoy any of these forms more than others?
The play Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light is the place where all of this can come together. I have to think of all these forms as one expression and move towards a cohesive whole, or I’d go crazy!! I also photograph and wish to include those images in the setting.
Your new third original album takes up and advances the themes and musical ideas of Native Joy for Real, your previous album. Would you comment on the process of bringing this album to completion and your hopes in the process?
Each project has a spirit. Native Joy for Real came forth despite a traumatic injury. It doesn’t look or sound quite like anything else, a kind of hybrid. This new album takes the various elements that are hanging loose and melds them. I remain inspired by Jim Pepper’s crossovers, and I am moving ahead toward my own realizations and experiments. I want this album to communicate to listeners in a way that is beautiful and revolutionary.
Many listeners would say that you sing in at least three distinct voices in performance and on recordings—that of your sax and of course your own singing voice, as well as your spoken word poetry delivery. Do you consciously choose which voice to exercise for specific thoughts, emotions, effects?
I don’t know that I consciously choose which. Singing was the first voice I employed. I love to sing, as did my mother, until around fourteen, when I was forbidden to sing in our home. I left it behind then. I see or hear them all as one voice.
You have said that you most prefer performing with a band. Would you comment on the evolution of your band sound and organization, especially recently? What is your current recording and touring band line up, and how did this come to be?
I like having company on stage. There are more possibilities. Solo is all right too. Both are different experiences. With a band I stay with the standard rock set up: guitar, keyboard, bass and drums. I do sometimes go out with just Larry and his guitar and his/our looped and looping sounds. My current set up is Larry Mitchell, the amazing guitar giant, Howard Cloud on bass, amazing, Robert Muller on keyboards, who intimidated me when I first heard him. They all did! I’ve learned much from them and continue to learn. For drums it’s usually Steven Alvarez, on drums and Native voice, who also performs with Medicine Dreams, an Alaska band. Right now I call the band Joy Harjo and the Arrow Dynamics Band. It’s not the right name, yet.
The recording was mostly just me and Larry, with Robert on some tunes, and another few voices in a couple of places.
Although the band Poetic Justice disbanded many years ago, still people commonly refer to your performances as Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice. Have you considered reviving the band name sometime in the future in response to this unfading (if incorrect) popular perception?
I’ve thought about it. I decided to let the name go because it was so associated with a cool, reggae jazz sound. I am trying to find another way to use the Poetic Justice name, with a change. Any ideas?
Do you see your work as political in some sense?
Everything is political, whether you choose to see it that way or not. I’ve weathered fierce tribal politics, canoe club politics, music, poetry, and everything has politics. With whatever you say or do you are making a stand, one way or the other. And even that you are saying or doing something makes a stand.
You travel often between your home in Hawai‘i and your teaching work in New Mexico. The high desert and the ocean beaches—quite a notable geographic contrast! And of course you tour with readings and performances nationally and internationally. What role does travel and changing situations/places have in your artistic awareness and in your writing?
Some of us move more vertically in the world. We stay in one place and go deep. Others, like me, move more horizontally. We go out and bring back new ideas, synthesis, change.
Both New Mexico and Hawai‘i can be described as “Indian Country” or “Native Country.” Do you see a separate culture outside the “United States” culture? What about the crossing of borders and boundaries, politically and culturally?
I’ve always called the U.S. culture the “over-culture” and don’t consider it a true culture. Beliefs, social institutions, arts, and traditions construct culture. The United States is made up of many cultures. There is no such thing as a melting pot. There are various cultural streams that are renewed, slowed, cut off, or otherwise changed. The over-culture is a culture of buying and selling.
You teach creative writing at the University of New Mexico. What thoughts do you have for young and new writers coming up?
Those who write are assisting in constructing the next world, the next consciousness. Be open, aware, and study. Study with all parts of your being, not just your intellect. Some of your knowledge may come from books, most of it from other sources. Always allow yourself to be surprised. And, write.
What writers and recording artists interest you recently?
I am reading the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature out of Australia, edited by Anita Heiss and Peter Minter, the stories of Patricia Grace, a Maori writer, and poems by Bengali poets, especially Sunil Gangopadhyay. As for music, my listening is eclectic: everything these days from James Brown to Hawaiian traditional to Michael Brecker and Luis Miguel.
You’ll be performing soon in Taos and in September in Albuquerque. Will these both be with your band, or solo shows? Any thoughts and hopes for these performances, which are being greatly looked forward to by your fans?
I have three performances lined up in New Mexico this late summer/fall. It’s nice they coincide with the album release. All three are band performances. And we’ll have new CDs for sale (and the older ones!). New Mexico audiences are my heart and soul and I’m always happy to perform here.
Bill Nevins, based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is a cultural journalist, poet, and educator. Nevins publishes regularly in AbqARTS, Local iQ, Trend, Z Magazine, Roots World, and other outlets. He teaches writing at the University of New Mexico, Valencia Campus, and is the UNM chapter president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).