Valerie Naranjo

Last updated
Valerie Naranjo
Born
Valerie Dee Naranjo

(1958-10-10) October 10, 1958 (age 65) [1]
Occupations
  • Percussionist
  • Composer
  • Professor
Years active1988–present

Valerie Naranjo (born October 10, 1958), is a percussionist, musicologist, professor, and member of the Saturday Night Live Band. She specializes in the music and percussive instruments of West Africa, particularly the gyil [1] and also excels at the marimba. She has been a touring musician, played with Broadway productions, and composed film scores. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Naranjo was born in Los Angeles. Both parents were Native American, her father was a member of the Southern Utetribe and her mother had Navajo heritage. Music was an important part of her community and her childhood experience and she started playing piano in high school. Starting her university studies at the University of Colorado, she took a class with a Ghanaian instructor and first learned of West African keyboard percussion and the gyil. She transferred to the University of Oklahoma and majored in Vocal and Instrumental Music Education. After graduating, she moved to New York City and later pursued a graduate degree at Ithaca College, studying with Gordon Stout.

Career

In New York, Naranjo made many opportunities to establish herself as a working musician. She played her 7-foot marimba in the subway system (which resulted in at least two bookings in off-Broadway plays.) [3] She also freelanced and built connections in a wide and active group of musicians in the city that led to work such as touring Europe with The Philip Glass Ensemble between 1988 and 1993. Other performance experience from the first half of the 1990s included work with Ulali, Richard Barone, and David Byrne. She also traveled to and spent time living in South Africa and Zimbabwe where she immersed herself in learning new rhythms and about pacing during energetic percussion performances. (In the late 80s, she had also spent time in Ghana, solidifying her love for and expertise with the gyil.) [1]

After working on The Tempest with director Julie Taymor, Naranjo was asked to be a part of The Lion King in 1996. She was an important part of the creation of the show's sound: selecting instruments to be included in the show's orchestra, auditioning musicians, and helping to write the musical arrangements. Naranjo has performed with The Lion King for over 25 years and it is the highest grossing Broadway musical of all time. [4]

Around the same time she was establishing the percussive sound of The Lion King, an old friend and musical collaborator, Lenny Pickett, who she met playing music with Philip Glass, asked Naranjo to join the Saturday Night Live Band in 1995. Pickett looked to her to bring lively percussive and fresh sounds to the show during a time the show was struggling to maintain its audiences. [1] She works alongside Shawn Pelton, a drummer, in the band. Her instrument set-up consists of two mallet instruments as well as chime trees, woodblocks, cymbals, congas, bongos, djembe, kpanlogo drum, timbales, and a variety of shakers, among other instruments. [5]

Since 2011, Naranjo has taught in the New York University Steinhardt School's percussion department. She directs the African Gyil and Percussion Ensemble there. [1]

Naranjo has performed at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and The White House and was named World Music Percussionist of the Year in 2005 and 2008 by Drum! magazine reader poll. [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Percussion instrument</span> Type of musical instrument that produces a sound by being hit

A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments. In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of idiophone, membranophone, aerophone and chordophone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Musical composition</span> An original musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece

Musical composition can refer to an original piece or work of music, either vocal or instrumental, the structure of a musical piece or to the process of creating or writing a new piece of music. People who create new compositions are called composers. Composers of primarily songs are usually called songwriters; with songs, the person who writes lyrics for a song is the lyricist. In many cultures, including Western classical music, the act of composing typically includes the creation of music notation, such as a sheet music "score", which is then performed by the composer or by other musicians. In popular music and traditional music, songwriting may involve the creation of a basic outline of the song, called the lead sheet, which sets out the melody, lyrics and chord progression. In classical music, orchestration is typically done by the composer, but in musical theatre and in pop music, songwriters may hire an arranger to do the orchestration. In some cases, a pop or traditional songwriter may not use written notation at all and instead compose the song in their mind and then play, sing or record it from memory. In jazz and popular music, notable sound recordings by influential performers are given the weight that written or printed scores play in classical music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Xylophone</span> Wooden keyboard percussion instrument

The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel, the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in the fashion of the keyboard of a piano. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African and Asian instruments, diatonic in many western children's instruments, or chromatic for orchestral use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marimba</span> Wooden keyboard percussion instrument

The marimba is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars that are struck by mallets. Below each bar is a resonator pipe that amplifies particular harmonics of its sound. Compared to the xylophone, the marimba has a lower range. Typically, the bars of a marimba are arranged chromatically, like the keys of a piano. The marimba is a type of idiophone.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Balafon</span> Type of wooden xylophone originating in Mali

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Jones, Dr. Shane. "Valerie Naranjo". Percussive Arts Society. Retrieved 18 May 2024.
  2. "Valerie Naranjo - Music Adjunct Faculty". NYU Steinhardt. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
  3. Geist, W.E. (27 May 1987). "About new york; how do you get to the subways? practice, practice". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
  4. "Highest Grossing Music Theater Franchise". Guinness World Records. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
  5. Arns, Megan. "Valerie Naranjo: Breaking Boundaries" (PDF). Performing Arts Society. Retrieved 7 July 2024.
  6. "Valerie Naranjo". Open Center. Retrieved 7 July 2024.