Morning Thanks--Brule'

I'm not sure exactly what to call it--part pageant, part museum, and part rock concert. Whatever Brule' is, it's marvelous entertainment, enriching and overpowering, in large part because the music ("contemporary Native American music" they call it themselves) features a driving beat that's somehow, also, meditative in a New-Ageish way. It has something of the Dave Clark Five, something of the singers and drummers of any of dozens of powwows around the continent, something of the religious character of most Native music. 

I tuned in when I was given a CD as a gift from a teacher--and former student--for visiting her classroom twenty years ago. I'd never heard of it or him or them, a group created (quite literally) by an artist named Paul LaRoche, who had been adopted as a child and had grown up in Worthington, Minnesota as the child of a white couple who'd never bothered to let him know that, by birth, he was a Lakota from the Lower Brule' reservation in South Dakota. 

He says his discovery of his origins led him away from the disastrous path his life was on as a rock musician and into a deep investigation of heritage that he's still on. It's a family enterprise, his daughter playing flute, his son on drums. The reception for what Brule does on stage has grown through the last decades. He says they used to dream of playing Rapid City; today, they do their thing around the world.

Some time ago already, they added fancy dancers, which makes a Brule' concert unlike any other really--an experience. 

And one more thing--it's actually a bit of a church service, La Roche himself a missionary for the gospel of reconciliation, a message he's not at all shy about preaching, in large part, he says, because he's spent a lifetime trying himself to do that tough job in his own life, trying to bring healing to the breach which separates the two cultures so vividly his.

Brule' is a blessing. I'm greatly thankful for the Sabbath they created once more with a stunning show. They were at Arnold's Park on Sunday night, and they were, as always, great, playing before thousands out on the green.