When the Dover Quartet asked Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate to compose a new work inspired by Native American traditions, he turned to the woodland creatures venerated by his own Chickasaw Nation. The results, Woodland Songs, is the title work on the Dover's new album.
"I just wanted to have a blast making character sketches of five of our woodland animals," Tate tells Morning Edition host Leila Fadel. "I take a lot of artistic license to ... be very impressionistic and abstract, or very overt about the tunes themselves."
Chickasaw people are originally from the southeastern United States and their family clans are named after woodland creatures. Each of the five movements of Tate's work is imbued with the spirit of the corresponding animal — frenetic like the squirrel, staccato like the woodpecker, graceful like the deer, shimmering like the fish and mischievous like the raccoon, which is Tate's own family clan.
When it came to interpreting his composition, Tate, whose works have been performed around the world, had blunt instructions for the members of the quartet: "Treat this music like I'm dead, because then you're free," he told them. He wanted the musicians to bring their own flavor to what was already written on the page.
Dover cellist Camden Shaw describes working with Tate as a "great balance of being very demanding for what he wanted to hear, but also allowing us to be ourselves and feeling like we're all on the same team."
The quartet also commissioned from Tate an arrangement of Rattle Songs. The vocal pieces, accompanied by turtle shell rattles, were composed by Tuscarora/Taino singer-songwriter Pura Fé, a founding member of the women's a cappella group Ulali, which combines traditional Native American tunes with more contemporary styles. Tate described his own arrangement as "layers upon layers of both tradition and modernization."
The album closes with Antonín Dvořák's String Quartet No. 12, Op.96. It's nicknamed the "The American" because the Czech composer was inspired by Black spirituals and native American melodies during his stay in Iowa in the summer of 1893.
Shaw says the three featured works represent different takes on an American sound. "The desire really at the core of this album was to explore connections between things musically that have existed on this continent for a very, very long time."
Tate, now 57, thinks about shifting perspectives on time, tradition and modernity. "As I've grown older, I have embraced the idea that time just doesn't exist. Everything is modern and always was modern," he observes. "The same artists and conversations we have now, all of our ancestors had thousands of years ago. So Dvořák is just as modern as me."
The broadcast version of this story was produced by Barry Gordemer. The digital version was edited by Tom Huizenga.
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