Maven and the Night Ravens planned one last tour prior to their departures for college. This 11-show tour through the Southwest was scheduled to promote their Night Ravens Foundation, which had a mission statement of, “Giving to improve lives of individual young adults among the communities of indigenous peoples living west of the Mississippi River.” They had hired an executive director, in Sheila Black Petrovich, at a nominal salary, and had established a board, chaired by Ike Moseseek, and now the money was ready to flow. This was the pleasant business of fulfilling dreams. In aiding one ambitious adolescent, others in the community would benefit as well, ripples in a pond. For examples, there was the Paiute who dreamt of a radio station, the Jicarilla Apache who would foster multiple land uses with juniper, solar, and truck farming, and the Zuni who envisioned a mobile food cart of international cuisines.
To promote the foundation and its initial giving, the girls played gratis to 10 tribal entities in community centers or gymnasiums. It was a dusty but exhilarating early summer trip to the reservations and pueblos. Each of the six musicians came back changed, glowing. Sitting in the tour bus on the ride home, Heather nudged Gloria. “This has been the finishing school for our souls.”
Gloria nodded. From the beginning Gloria had been the band’s frontwoman, their spokesperson and lead singer. On this tour, given their Quaish heritage, Patty and Katy took center stage. As the band’s rhythm section, they brought forth the beating heart of the Night Ravens, and Maven was completely happy and at ease with it all. It was, in fact, their voices of leadership that prodded the foundation toward its mission.
In Window Rock the band performed a song live on KTNN, the Voice of the Navajo Nation, following a lengthy interview with Katy Lakeleaf and Patty Whitefish, who were asked about the Night Ravens Foundation.
Of special note, Katy said, “Maven and the Night Ravens have prospered because folks like your listeners appreciate our music and go out and buy it. We’d be just another garage band without you in Indian Country. In Warhaven, where we all come from, when someone does you a good turn, you return the favor. We’re just practicing good manners, as you Diné do!”
Patty interjected, “Warhaven was a great place to grow up. Everyone was so supportive of the music we were making. The band wants to reach out and offer that care to all the young ones who dream, who want somehow to foster a talent and give back to their communities.”
Katy continued, “We’re looking to give voice and action to the next, to use the cultures of your neighbors, the next kachinas. Patty and I are of the Quaish culture, cousins to you and to the Apache. We all pray for the unity of peoples through love and good works. All of us are hallowed!”
Patty added, “We want to improve the present for these young ones, so their futures are glorious and gleaming!”
They opened their shows with the Shawnee Link Wray’s “Rumble” which transitioned into a pair of the Cherokee Jimi Hendrix’s songs, “Purple Haze” and “The Wind Cries Mary.” The Night Ravens then performed six of their hits rapid fire without a breather. The set ended with a pair of Big Joe Turner songs, “Corina, Corina” and a wild wandering rave up of “Boogie Woogie Country Girl,” rewritten as “Harvest Dancing Pueblo Girl.” For this last song the band was joined by a trio of native drummers, locally recruited. Patty wailed,
“She wears a beaded shawl, silver filagree, red leather jacket fringed, if you please.
“She’s our harvest dancing, high step prancing, Pueblo girl.”
In the Chinle High School gymnasium, the famous Wildcat basketball shrine, they held a sock hop. The dance floor was an undulating sea of denim, turquoise and silver. Braided pigtails rose and fell as waves in an inland sea.
They had offered a surprising new instrumentation for the second set of each show; the innovation had mesmerized the audiences and had grown a new pair of wings for the Night Ravens. The music was a suite, “Corn Meal Sacred Girl,” composed by Tara DuMont. Gloria Petrovich played the lute, Heather Humphly a Spanish guitar, Tara a harpsichord, Shirlee Lapland an oboe, Katy timpani, and Patty a contrabass recorder taller than she. On the break they had put their hair up in squash blossom whorls, dressed in long denim skirts and simple white blouses. The instrumental set was haunting and grew angelic when toward the end local singers who had been organized in advance gathered around the band, raising their voices as a chanting choir. These astounding sounds were recorded and soon released, with proceeds split equally among the ten tribes and the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, site of the final concert.
The choirs ended with two couplets:
“Corn flour sacred girl/ You dance by the fire with your squash blossom whorls.
“Raise hope to the blue skies/ That beauty and truth squash all vile, harmful lies.”
At the Pueblo Indian Cultural Center in Albuquerque the final concert of the tour unfolded in its lovely courtyard, where the people were surrounded by its seven murals depicting Pueblo sacred dances. It was a glamorous event and the media were in force, unlike the isolated dusty pueblos and sweaty school gymnasiums, which were the real gems of the crown of this tour for the girls. It was there they met those the foundation served, not the politicians and social elite of the city. The press and the wealthy would help their cause, but they had preferred the gritty truths to the pretty comforts. When the second set shifted to the chorale of chanted vocables, assembled were 38 voices, two each from the 19 pueblos whose cultures were represented in the center’s museum and galleries. Many tears were shed for this lovely community of singing.
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