Collective Spirit Podcast

S2E10: Delbert Anderson (Diné)

• First Peoples Fund • Season 2 • Episode 10

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2023 Cultural Capital Fellow Delbert Anderson (Diné) is an accomplished musician creating jazz intertwined with the soul-stirring melodies of Native American music. Delbert Anderson takes us on an auditory journey that melds the rich narratives of the Dineé culture with the intricate improvisations of jazz. He shares his story of cultural exploration and musical innovation, from the formation of the Delbert Anderson Trio to its crescendo into a dynamic quartet. Celebrating the heritage of influential Native American musicians like Jacob C. Morgan and "Big Chief" Moore, Delbert unfolds a musical saga that honors his ancestors while forging new paths in the music world.

Speaker 1:

I get inspired by our history and many people like to think in the future or what's coming up. But I'm getting a lot of creativity from going backwards, from diving into the history and something interesting that I like or find. I try to bring that up through music.

Speaker 2:

First People's Fund presents the Collective Spirit Podcast. The Collective Spirit moves each of us to stand up and make a difference, to pass on ancestral knowledge and simply extend a hand of generosity. The Collective Spirit Podcast features Native artists and culture bearers who discuss the power of indigenous art and culture.

Speaker 1:

My name is Delbert Anderson. I am a trumpet artist from Farmington, new Mexico. I was born in Shiprock, new Mexico, on the Navajo Reservation. I'm a jazz musician but also a composer, educator and getting more into the control ambassador type of work, sort of looking at history of musicians within the Navajo tribe. My pronouns are he, him, his, my parents. They are from Natterley to Colorado and also Cove, arizona.

Speaker 1:

I like to say trumpet artists because I'm not confined into certain genres, because it extends very far into education, into the culture and also in the various programs that we operate. We have a youth program, a lessons program, and we host performances for the community here in Farmington. I've been able to keep music at the base but operate in different art mediums and most of the time I'm playing trumpet. I have some college underneath my belt, like education certificates, that kind of thing, which allows me to teach at universities. I've been working at San Juan College for about six, seven years and my performing schedule just got way too crazy and I wasn't able to commit to the college anymore, so I ended up taking some time off from teaching. I grew up non-traditional. However, a lot of the information and stories that I've been given from my grandfather's side, on my paternal side, and his grandfather was very traditional, so he would share a lot of things like songs and parts of history that he's been through and his grandfather went through, and all that information I was receiving I inputted into my music and really tried to figure it out.

Speaker 1:

When, 2013, I started the Gilbert Anderson trio and we played jazz standards like those are just like popular jazz songs the first two days and then I kind of was looking at it from the outside, thinking there are like millions of jazz combos already. We're going to be like one little fish in this big, big, big sea. So I told the guys, like, go back home and really think about what you want to bring to the group. One of the things that really put us apart from everyone was I got a lot of spinning songs from the Dinec culture. I was inspired by those melodies and would put them through this trio that I formed. So if you can imagine Dinec melodies with Latin funk and fusion grooves and long extended jamming, it gets pretty crazy. So that was 2013. Today we went through many phases and so now, still with the denat melodies at the forefront, we have this quartet. That is just a great, great, high-caliber quartet that's just been really making the performances happen and making them enjoyable. So you know, and I guess in a cultural sense, a lot of the things that I learned from my grandfather have been really taking that in and putting it in the process of not only how we compose music or anything, but how we sort of connect as human beings as well.

Speaker 1:

I relate to the trumpet differently than most. A lot of people are inspired by other artists or maybe something that they want to do. It could be anything. Inspiration could be anything. What I'm inspired by is simply my family. I always feel like when I just focus on my own family and relate it to how my work is supporting my family, I always have that drive there Like I never get tired of it or burnt out from loving what I do and I love what I do because my family loves it and they support it. So that's the main inspiration. I have other inspirations, you know, like the mentors that I have had from the history of jazz, like Louis Armstrong, chris Brown or Lee Morgan. You know they're all influences that I have, but something happened about maybe two years ago.

Speaker 1:

I started to go back into my culture and start to research musicians the net musicians from as early as I could find, and I've been finding out some amazing musicians. So if you look at jazz and classical, you might think how do Native Americans relate to that? However, you know in my research their musicians guys like a gentleman named Jacob C Morgan, who was a naval man from Crown Point, was a very high caliber classical player. He learned in the boarding school Perez and he was taught by some of the best trumpet players in the world at that time and he actually was able to be a special guest with the John Philip Sousa band, which was kind of the highest known classical concert band of the world at the time and still is to this day. But there was a Danette man there, jacob C Morgan, from Crown Point, who was just doing it all correctly and touring from Paris to starting bands. He's actually one of the guys who started the Navajo Nation band. That's still going on to this day.

Speaker 1:

And when you look at the jazz side, apache trombone player Russell Bigg Chief was his name. He was an Apache man who played with Louis Armstrong and Louis Armstrong was the godfather of this jazz that we hear of today. And when you look at both sides and we see like there's these Native American musicians there at the very forefront that are playing at these very high levels. It's just amazing when you look at like the classical world and jazz world, and because I always get asked like, how was the Native American associated with jazz? And you know, russell Bigg Chief was there when Louis Armstrong was there and they were probably learning together what jazz was and what improvisation was. But it's so early up in the history of everything that there had to be influences by them.

Speaker 1:

I just recently did a project with South Arts Organization where I toured areas of Jacobson Morgan's life and so we went to his birthplace with the Crown Point, gallup, fort Defiance, went to Cortez, farmington. He ended up dying in Farmington in the 1950s. There's just so much history there and so I did the tours trying to create awareness of this gentleman that played great trumpet classical music and when talking to some of his siblings that are still alive today, they said he also was playing in some big bands, meaning some jazz bands that were probably around at that time. I get inspired by our history and many people like to think in the future or what's coming up, but I'm getting a lot of creativity, from going backwards, from diving into the history and something interesting that I like or find. I try to bring that up through music. So my first project proposal I created a partnership with the Bureau of Land Management and we toured five national monuments but also composed two pieces with the original landowners of each monument and that was really neat. They shared stories, we shared our stories and we composed together and that album is still coming up. We're still trying to find time to go into the studio and record those songs, but the elders basically said they gave us approval to use their songs in the hopes of it will inspire the youth to get back into their cultures.

Speaker 1:

The second time this year I applied for a youth program that I have called Build the Band and I built a curriculum out of the characteristics that keep my family together, but also like a social Navajo song that we can learn how to improvise on. And people like Talababigay and her grandmother they're the ones that are going to make this song for us and going to later send this song to some of my colleagues back at Eastern New Mexico and we're going to totally build a curriculum on how we can learn from this Danette melody. It's just a great program. The program helps the students in music business, but also music creativity and composing. We just finished a five day tour, a mentor tour, with them, where our band was able to travel with their eight piece group and we talked on the road, we ate together and we were just sharing just various different things of the music industry.

Speaker 1:

Out of the eight, four of them already been accepted to Eastern New Mexico and I think three of them are going for some type of music degree and I think we had about six seniors this year and two juniors.

Speaker 1:

But of the six seniors, four of them have already been accepted. So it's really nice to see them going that route and not anyone just says, oh, I want no-transcript degree in music. It's a pretty rough one, you know. It takes a lot of work. It shows that what we're doing here in Farmington with the program is really inspiring these students, and I know there's more of them that are gonna go into the music field as well. So, yeah, first People's Fund definitely helped us create a more sustainable program for the students and I can't wait to see who comes in our next semester, so I'm very excited about that. None of this would have been possible without partnerships and relationships, and the only way those things work is if you, as an individual, is very composed and just good character, truthful. You know just all of the above and I hope that the legacy could be that you know that guy was a nice guy and he got a lot done with a lot of different people.

Speaker 2:

The Collective Spirit podcast is produced by First People's Fund, whose mission is to honor and support Indigenous artists and culture bearers through grant-making initiatives, culturally-rooted programming, and training and mentorship. Learn more at FirstPeople'sFundorg.