Robert Mirabal | |
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Background information | |
Origin | Taos Pueblo, New Mexico |
Genres | Native American music, New Mexico music, World music |
Labels | Warner Western [1] |
Website | www |
Robert Mirabal (born October 6, 1966) is a Pueblo musician and Native American flute player and maker from Taos Pueblo, New Mexico.
His flutes are world-renowned and have been displayed at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of the American Indian. An award-winning musician and leading proponent of world music, Mirabal performs worldwide, sharing flute songs, tribal rock, dance, and storytelling.
Mirabal was twice named the Native American Music Awards' Artist of the Year, and received the Songwriter of the Year award three times. He was featured in Grammy Award winning album, Sacred Ground: A Tribute to Mother Earth in 2006 for Best Native American Music Album
Mirabal also published a book of storytelling poetry and prose in 1994 entitled Skeletons of a Bridge and is currently writing a second book, Running Alone in Photographs. Aside from his artistic talents, Mirabal is a father and a farmer, living in Taos Pueblo and participating in the traditional ways and rituals of his people.
Raised traditionally by his mother and grandparents on the pueblo, and born in 1966, Mirabal spoke Tiwa at home and began making flutes at the age of 19. In school, he had learned how to play clarinet, saxophone, piano, and drums, but found his true musical voice in the traditional Native American flute. He met the renowned Native American flute player R. Carlos Nakai as a young man and was greatly inspired by him.
He moved to New York City, playing in a multicultural band made up of a Senegalese guitarist, a Cape Verdean drummer and Haitian keyboardist. There, Mirabal immersed himself in the sound of hip-hop, funk and R&B, which would inform his later trademark music.
He recorded an independent debut album in 1988, and went on to land a contract with Warner Western and later, Silver Wave Records. His first projects were generally focused on traditional music consisting of Native American flute and percussion. One of his early albums, entitled Land was originally composed for two Japanese avant-garde modern dancers Eiko and Koma, who choreographed a dance production inspired by their impressions of the land around Taos. Cedar and clay flutes, percussion, rattles, and traditional vocals were used throughout the album. Reynaldo Lujan, a percussionist who would go on to collaborate with Mirabal for over a decade, played on the album along with Mark Andes. Each song told a different story about the land around Taos Mountain. The acclaimed performance toured Japan, Europe and the U.S. and in 1992, Mirabal was given New York's Dance and Performance Bessie Award for the score.
In 1996, Mirabal collaborated with Grammy Award-winning Native American singer-songwriter Bill Miller on an album Native Suite-Chants: Dances and the Remembered Earth. The project was both experimental and traditional, featuring flute and percussion as well as Mohican pow-wow singing.
All these disparate interests and experiences led to the band Mirabal in 1995. Bassist Mark Andes, from the '60s band Spirit and '80s rock group Heart, joined Robert along with Reynaldo Lujan. In 1997, they released the groundbreaking album Mirabal that fused rock, funk, and other contemporary forms of music with traditional music, drawing on the legacy of other Native American pop/rock musicians (such as Buffy Sainte-Marie) but creating a unique sound that would set Mirabal apart and gain further mainstream attention.
Mirabal came to greater national prominence during his performance in PBS' 1998 musical dance production, Spirit: A Journey in Dance, Drum, and Song, for which he composed the soundtrack with traditional flute and percussion. Due to the popularity of the program, the network went on to produce a music/dance program centered entirely on Mirabal and his traditional/rock fusion music in 2002, entitled Music from a Painted Cave. The program and its corresponding CD release were enthusiastically received by mainstream audiences and became a benchmark world music album. He also collaborated with John Tesh for the acclaimed PBS One World TV special for the millennium in 2000, which showcased music from around the world.
Mirabal's In the Blood CD (2007) on Star Road Records (www.starroadrecords.com) was featured in New Mexico Magazine for their October 2007 issue. The reviewer wrote that "it is one of his finest to date." [2] His native state's tourism magazine lauded the CD's "lively danceable rhythms (that) should appeal to mainstream radio.... Mirabal (is) one of the trailblazers of tribal rock.... [2]
Mirabal was featured in a 2008 New Mexico Magazine story about Native American flute players, [3] as well as another, 2014 story about the arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. [4]
In 2011 Mirabal joined the avant-garde string quartet ETHEL for a collaborative tour titled Music of the Sun. This is his second collaboration with the group, with whom he performed at BAM's Next Wave Festival in 2008. [5]
Taos Pueblo is an ancient pueblo belonging to a Taos-speaking (Tiwa) Native American tribe of Puebloan people. It lies about 1 mile (1.6 km) north of the modern city of Taos, New Mexico. The pueblos are considered to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States. This has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Taos art colony was an art colony founded in Taos, New Mexico, by artists attracted by the culture of the Taos Pueblo and northern New Mexico. The history of Hispanic craftsmanship in furniture, tin work, and other mediums also played a role in creating a multicultural tradition of art in the area.
Indigenous music of North America, which includes American Indian music or Native American music, is the music that is used, created or performed by Indigenous peoples of North America, including Native Americans in the United States and Aboriginal peoples in Canada, Indigenous peoples of Mexico, and other North American countries—especially traditional tribal music, such as Pueblo music and Inuit music. In addition to the traditional music of the Native American groups, there now exist pan-Indianism and intertribal genres as well as distinct Native American subgenres of popular music including: rock, blues, hip hop, classical, film music, and reggae, as well as unique popular styles like chicken scratch and New Mexico music.
Indigenous music of Canada encompasses a wide variety of musical genres created by Aboriginal Canadians. Before European settlers came to what is now Canada, the region was occupied by many First Nations, including the West Coast Salish and Haida, the centrally located Iroquois, Blackfoot and Huron, the Dene to the North, and the Innu and Mi'kmaq in the East and the Cree in the North. Each of the indigenous communities had their own unique musical traditions. Chanting – singing is widely popular and most use a variety of musical instruments.
The Pueblo Revolt of 1680, also known as Popé's Rebellion or Popay's Rebellion, was an uprising of most of the indigenous Pueblo people against the Spanish colonizers in the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, larger than present-day New Mexico. The Pueblo Revolt killed 400 Spaniards and drove the remaining 2,000 settlers out of the province. The Spaniards reconquered New Mexico twelve years later.
New Mexico is a state of the Southwest United States. The state has music traditions dating back to the ancient Anasazi and Pueblo people, Navajo, Apache, and the Spanish Santa Fe de Nuevo México; these old traditions are found in both their original folk forms and as a modern folk genre known as New Mexico music.
Pueblo music includes the music of the Hopi, Zuni, Taos Pueblo, San Ildefonso, Santo Domingo, and many other Puebloan peoples, and according to Bruno Nettl features one of the most complex Native American musical styles on the continent. Characteristics include common use of hexatonic and heptatonic scales, variety of form, melodic contour, and percussive accompaniment, melodic range averaging between an octave and a twelfth, with rhythmic complexity equal to the Plains Indians musical sub-area.
Bill Miller is a Native American singer/songwriter and artist of Mohican heritage. He is a guitarist, player of the Native American flute and painter.
Mary Youngblood (Aleut/Seminole) is a Native American musician, and performer of the Native American flute.
Sacred Ground: A Tribute to Mother Earth is a compilation album of Native American music released through Silver Wave Records on September 13, 2005. In 2006, the album won Jim Wilson the Grammy Award for Best Native American Music Album.
The Millicent Rogers Museum is an art museum in Taos, New Mexico, founded in 1956 by the family of Millicent Rogers. Initially the artworks were from the multi-cultural collections of Millicent Rogers and her mother, Mary B. Rogers, who donated many of the first pieces of Taos Pueblo art. In the 1980s, the museum was the first cultural organization in New Mexico to offer a comprehensive collection of Hispanic art.
Albert Looking Elk, also known as Albert Martinez was a Taos Pueblo painter. Looking Elk is one of the three Taos Pueblo Painters.
Albert Lujan (1892–1948), also known as Xenaiua meaning "Weasel Arrow," was a genre and landscape painter from Taos Pueblo, New Mexico.
Juan Mirabal, also known as "Tapaiu" or Red Dancer, was an artist from Taos Pueblo, New Mexico.
New Mexico music is a genre of music that originated in the US state of New Mexico, it derives from Pueblo music in the 13th century, and with the folk music of Hispanos during the 16th to 19th centuries in Santa Fe de Nuevo México.
Indian House is a Taos, New Mexico based record company specialized in traditional Native American Indian music in the United States and Canada. Founded in 1966 by Tony and Ida Lujan Isaacs, the Indian House catalog has now around 150 titles. The company originally issued recordings on phonodisc and cassette tape, however almost all albums are now available in the CD format.
Eva Mirabal, also known as Eah-Ha-Wa (1920–1968) was a Native American painter, muralist, illustrator, and cartoonist from Taos Pueblo, New Mexico. Her primary medium was gouache, a type of watercolor.
Land is an album by the Native American musician Robert Mirabal, released in 1995. The album originated as a score for a dance piece by Eiko & Koma, which was first performed in 1991. It was nominated for a First Americans in the Arts award. Mirabal and Eiko & Koma adapted part of the score for later productions.