Uploaded November 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
This world premiere performance of Brent Michael Davids' Taptonahana appeared in a recent live streamed concert.
Enjoy the full performance anytime for free at content.thespco.org/music/concert-library/concert/songs-of-sorrow-songs-of-hope
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Taptonahana translates as “we speak” in the Mahican language. The work, Taptonahana, was composed for flutist Julia Bogorad-Kogan, and was commissioned by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (2021). Most indigenous languages are generative languages (for example: Mohican, Lenape or Munsee), rather than representative (such as English). For the West, language is a means of representing something real, and words themselves stand for something by denoting it; language personifies what is thought to be ‘really real’ in Western thought. In this way, words are seen as tiny canoes that carry meaning inside them. But for Native languages, words create reality; they spawn it, and are considered generative. For indigenous people, life moves along however life is spoken, whether enacted through speech, ceremonially performed, or reciprocated with extended kinship relations.
A generative process is how indigenous music works as well, though songs are not fixed nouns for indigenous life, so more insight might come from a process of song-ing or music-ing. For Native Americans, song-ings are considered voicings of the people, and what a Native American enacts with song-ing moves life in that direction; what is sung about happens. When generative song-ing occurs, it’s like birthing out performative sequences of life. No two sequential songs are the same in the process, just as no two successive moments are identical. Indigenous cultures see music like giving birth so that each new song event is a new creation. The song being sung might be a time-honored song, but when performed it is newly reborn — it is not considered the same song.
With its mix of indigenous and Western solo flute stylings, Taptonahana brings a telling or talking into the world from a Mohican perspective. The tonal shape of the indigenous song-ing style mimics the Mahican language with sharp enunciations and whip-like releases. The songs and languages share a close bond, and Taptonahana is offered as a musical conversation, as if embracing several indigenous speakers, but enacted alone by solo flute. Taptonahana blends Western composition and indigenous song-ing for a glimpse of Mohican life, from the inside, as “we speak.”
—Brent Michael Davids
This world premiere performance of Brent Michael Davids' Taptonahana appeared in a recent live streamed concert.
Enjoy the full performance anytime for free at content.thespco.org/music/concert-library/concert/songs-of-sorrow-songs-of-hope
---------
Taptonahana translates as “we speak” in the Mahican language. The work, Taptonahana, was composed for flutist Julia Bogorad-Kogan, and was commissioned by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (2021). Most indigenous languages are generative languages (for example: Mohican, Lenape or Munsee), rather than representative (such as English). For the West, language is a means of representing something real, and words themselves stand for something by denoting it; language personifies what is thought to be ‘really real’ in Western thought. In this way, words are seen as tiny canoes that carry meaning inside them. But for Native languages, words create reality; they spawn it, and are considered generative. For indigenous people, life moves along however life is spoken, whether enacted through speech, ceremonially performed, or reciprocated with extended kinship relations.
A generative process is how indigenous music works as well, though songs are not fixed nouns for indigenous life, so more insight might come from a process of song-ing or music-ing. For Native Americans, song-ings are considered voicings of the people, and what a Native American enacts with song-ing moves life in that direction; what is sung about happens. When generative song-ing occurs, it’s like birthing out performative sequences of life. No two sequential songs are the same in the process, just as no two successive moments are identical. Indigenous cultures see music like giving birth so that each new song event is a new creation. The song being sung might be a time-honored song, but when performed it is newly reborn — it is not considered the same song.
With its mix of indigenous and Western solo flute stylings, Taptonahana brings a telling or talking into the world from a Mohican perspective. The tonal shape of the indigenous song-ing style mimics the Mahican language with sharp enunciations and whip-like releases. The songs and languages share a close bond, and Taptonahana is offered as a musical conversation, as if embracing several indigenous speakers, but enacted alone by solo flute. Taptonahana blends Western composition and indigenous song-ing for a glimpse of Mohican life, from the inside, as “we speak.”
—Brent Michael Davids
