Poet Joy Harjo is playing unreleased tracks from her upcoming album, which is being produced by Grammy winner Esperanza Spalding, over the phone.
Harjo, an enrolled member of the Mvskoke Nation and three-term United States Poet Laureate, has a thriving side career as a saxophonist, singer, and songwriter – her most recent album, 2021’s “I Pray for My Enemies,” featured members of R.E.M., Nirvana and Pearl Jam – along with her day job as one of the nation’s best-known poets and writers.
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“I always wanted to play. I came to poetry through music. My mother was a songwriter,” says Harjo, who recalls facing resistance from others when she was learning the clarinet as a child. “I loved singing in school, music and art were my favorite classes. … My stepfather, when I was 14, forbid me to sing, and the band director wouldn’t let girls play saxophone. So I just quit music altogether.”
But the poet, who Sandra Cisneros describes as a kind of badass in the foreword to Harjo’s “Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: 50 Poems for 50 Years,” is not easily dissuaded.
“That’s so Sandra,” she laughs at Cisneros’ description of Harjo as a formidable single mom fixing flat tires and writing poems after doing the dishes. “Growing up, there was no one I could really depend on. I mean, I could depend on my mother’s love, and that was solid. I knew there were never any doubts. But when it came to being out in the world, it was up to me.”
And that drive, in a sense, brought her back to music.
“When I was close to 40, I picked up a tenor sax and had somebody write out the G blues scale and I started fooling around with it. And then I started the band, Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice, and just kept going,” she says. “I learned to play mostly on stage, which isn’t the best way to do it, but I can play. I can play.”
We are talking about music because Harjo will be coming to Idyllwild Arts’ upcoming Native American Arts Festival Week event, which runs from June 16-20. The free event will feature a Renegades of Art exhibition and panel discussion; music; featured speakers, a film screening and the family-friendly event, “Welcoming Home the Birds,” which honors the relationship the Cahuilla and Serrano people have with their traditional homelands. For a full schedule of workshops and events, visit https://idyllwildarts.org
Rather than giving a speech or doing a poetry reading, Harjo plans to stage a reading of a musical play she’s written.
“I never worked with Idyllwild Arts Center, but they’ve been amazing,” says Harjo, recalling how Shaliyah Ben, the executive director, contacted her about the event. “I said, ‘Well, I’m working on this musical play.’
“It’s not really like a full-on Western musical at all,” says Harjo. “The music director for this play is Julia Keefe. She’s Nez Perce. She’s been running around the country with her Indigenous Big Band.”
Harjo, who namechecks a range of jazz saxophonists during our conversation, including John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Lester Young, Paul Desmond, Gato Barbieri, Candy Dulfer, Jan Garbarek and more, says the play will weave together words and live and recorded music for the event – including some of the music she was sharing over the phone.
“The impetus was to show that Muskogee native people were part of the origin story of blues and jazz. It’s done through a story of a young band going with their leader from the reservation in Oklahoma to New Orleans,” says Harjo, who includes real people, such as Delta Blues forefather Charley Patton, and historical events in the fictional piece.
“It’s the story of music and how we’re part of that,” says Harjo. “It’s always struck me that the Trail of Tears, moving from the South into Oklahoma, is also one of the trails of American music. So all of that figures in.”
As well as this musical play and upcoming album, Harjo also has a new book, “Girl Warrior,” coming in the fall, and her work gets a close reading in Tracy K. Smith’s upcoming book “Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times.”
Asked about our current times, such as the firing of the Librarian of Congress, Carla D. Hayden, who wrote the introduction to Harjo’s anthology, “Living Nations, Living Words,” Harjo expressed puzzlement at how Hayden, a legislative branch employee with a 10-year appointment, could be dismissed.
“Overstepping is a nice way to say it,” says Harjo, who brings the conversation back around to music. “There’s this political and economic destabilization worldwide … You look at what stabilizes a system? It’s harmony.
“People are looking for that. They look for it in poetry. They look for it in music,” says Harjo as we begin to wrap up our conversation. “It’s who’s going to speak what can’t be spoken and help us find a way through the mess and open up a doorway so some light can come in and we can find our way.”
For information about Idyllwild Arts’ Native American Arts Festival Week event, visit https://idyllwildarts.