Oral history interview with Oliver Plumley

Anderson: My name is Amber Anderson, and I am here with Oliver Plumley at the Oklahoma State University Library on March 29, 2013, to discuss his life as a Native American artist. Oliver, where were you born, and where did you grow up?

Plumley: I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by way of Claremore Indian Hospital. My mother needed a C-section, and Claremore said, "No, we couldn't do nothing." I was tooken to Saint Francis and popped out on July 24. I grew up in Red Rock, Oklahoma. It's been the home of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe since 1880-something, since their removal, not removal, but they sold their land at the Big Blue Reservation in Nebraska and moved to Indian Territory.

Anderson: Red Rock is where you spent most of your life growing up?

Plumley: Yes. I spent most of my life growing up until--I think I've been away from there a few years after high school, and then a few years in the military, and about four years away while I was at the University of Oklahoma.

Anderson: Okay, what were some of the things you did as a child?

Plumley: Some of the things I did as a child, we just, we played. We ran around. We always had a thing about, my parents always told me about being home before dark, before street light. We would just run around and ride bikes, play, some traditional stuff. I know when we had different powwows and different dances, I would go with my parents to there. There were sometimes I'd sit and listen, and sometimes I would go and play. There was kind of a balance between being a kid 2:00with the same time sitting down, listening, and paying attention, knowing that in future years, I didn't really realize it. Later on in life I realized, you know, they try to have a balance between playing time and having fun and actually sitting there listening to the songs, listening to the singing and things like that.

Anderson: Right, so you normally played with friends, or did you have siblings?

Plumley: I was the youngest child, but I'm the only one between my parents. My dad's first wife, they had split a long time ago. My three siblings from their marriage was out married, had kids already. My mom's children, they were older, about to graduate when I came in the picture, so I was the only child at home 3:00even though I had a bunch of half-brothers and sister. Most of the time I played with friends and cousins, or distant cousins or something like that. We all lived on the same block or same part of town.

Anderson: How do you think growing up in a primarily Native community impacted your life?

Plumley: Well, the community was a mixture of Native and non-Native (we would say Caucasian and whites). It was probably a good fifty-fifty split down the middle. Sometimes it would be sixty-forty Native. Sometimes it would be forty-sixty Caucasians. It just depends. There's a lot of sense of community. I know I could go and play with some of my friends, and then at the same time when their folks had something to eat, you know, I'd always get invited to eat and stuff like that. It wasn't to where, "You're not our kid. Go home." It was a 4:00more sense of community. I knew that.

At the same time, my parents weren't around when I would go run around, but at the same time, I know there was other people there that was watching. If I get in trouble, I get in trouble by them. Then they tell my parents. When I get home, I got in trouble again. (Laughter) It was a pretty good little community that we grew up and we knew each other. We knew each other if you were relatives or if you were friends, or just that young lifestyle. At the same time, we knew that every year we would go dance at our annual encampment and see relatives or friends that their folks and parents would only come in once a year in the summer for the annual encampment.

Anderson: What is the annual encampment?

Plumley: Annual encampment is held every third weekend in July where the tribe 5:00gathers and has four days of dancing. A lot of the traditional songs are sung. Dancing, they have some more contest dancing now, but this is a time where the Otoe people camped. They would make their encampments. Everyone would bring in their tents, bring in their shades and arbors and stuff. People will cook all four days, even five days. They will move in. There would be the oldest buffalo clan member or the one who was deemed the leader. The head of the buffalo clan would make a journey from their house to the grounds the Sunday before the festivities started. They will be the first ones to move in, so they will come in, bless the ground and bless the ground in the dance arena. Then they were 6:00allowed to be the first one to move in, then followed by the chairmen and other council members. That tradition is still going on today, as we speak.

I know an older lady. I call her Grandma. Since she's an older lady, we just call her Grandma. Rosetta LeClair, she was an Arkeketa. Her maiden name's Arkeketa. She's from the buffalo clan. I remember one day my dad was telling me that she walked from her house, just on the outside of White Eagle, east side of White Eagle--which White Eagle is about eight miles north, just right across the Arkansas River to the North side of the Otoes. She walked. She got up early in the morning and walked on the side of the highway with her husband behind her. Walked all the way and went all the way into the dance arena where it was, just 7:00on the north side of the Red Rock Creek, a little off of Highway 177, the northeast part away from Red Rock off Highway 177. She walked all that way to continue that tradition.

They would have the dance and have the annual encampment for four days. Usually Wednesday, they would have a mourners feast. They would feed those who were mourning so they'd be able to participate. Then Thursday, all the new kids come in, all the ones who their parents want to bring them into the arena, so they will have those ceremonies of putting a plume on a girl or a brooch on a boy and take them around the arena, telling them about they're walking the footsteps of those who've gone on there. Even those who won't be paid to sing at the center drum, they will be brought in at the same time, as well. People will have what 8:00we call specials or giveaways. We're paying for certain positions, or we're paying for our children to be part of the arena. Someone who wants to come back into the arena after a yearlong of mourning, they have the opportunity Thursday to do all that.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday is the dancing, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoons. Since the Kiowa people came up and gave the Gourd Dance to the Otoes in probably in the 1910s, 1920s, every year

they've got a Kiowa head singer. They would sing Gourd Dance songs until the evening when the traditional, an Otoe singer, someone who knows Otoe songs would come out and be the evening singer, and all the different dances will go on. Most of our songs talk about war, talk about times of peace, times of battles 9:00and things like that, telling our history of things that have gone on. It's the time, as a kid, when you go and play and have fun. At the same time, there'd be times we had to sit there up front next to our parents and watch. Some of us, we would dress out and Gourd Dance or dance. This was the first time that we got exposed to some of our traditions.

Anderson: Were there people in your life that sparked your interest in becoming an artist?

Plumley: I know my grandpa, not my dad's real dad, my dad's adopted dad, even though that was his uncle--his dad and his uncle had the same mother but different fathers. My dad's grandmother came back from the Ioway Tribe back to the Otoe tribe. She had my grandpa and his uncle. His older brother took him as 10:00one of their own and gave him his name. My dad was raised by his uncle. His uncle was named Oliver, as well, so that's who I was named after. I never met him, but I heard tapes and cassettes of him singing peyote songs and Native American church songs that had Otoe words in it. I know my dad would sing a little bit, so that's kind of my first connection, as far as with my dad.

Then, there would be other singers that I would hear at the drum. Richard Roubedeaux was a singer that I talked with. Don Patterson was another singer. I remember hearing Johnny Kemble, and even his nephew Jimmy Kemble. They were 11:00Poncas, but they knew a lot of songs. My dad, he was raised by--his uncle and his wife, Suzette, was Ponca. My dad grew up in Ponca. Everyone thought he was Ponca until later on in life they realized, "No, you're Otoe." Oliver and Suzette didn't tell him. His cousins all told him, "You're adopted." We would always go up to White Eagle [Park] to their dance pavilion or to their cultural center to where I was listening to Ponca singers, and then at the same time listening to Otoe singers. A lot of good songs. I remember hearing some of, even when I was a kid, hearing Harry Buffalohead. He was a really great singer and composer of songs.

Then even when we'd go down to Carnegie to the Kiowa--my mom, her mother 12:00remarried a Kiowa. He was a Kiowa medicine man. His cousins were from the Cozad family. There were a lot of good singers. Old Man Cozad, Leonard Cozad Sr. Sticking to the Kiowa ways, he married just one woman, and had about nine or ten kids. She passed away, so in Kiowa tradition, he married her sister and had another nine or ten kids. There's a lot of Cozads. They would all come together and sing and have some very, very beautiful songs. Listening to him and listening to Leonard Cozad Jr. Him and my dad were really good friends, so just listening to them singing. Some of these older singers that some have gone on and some are still around, but just getting that influence of sitting at the drum and singing in how the proper way of conducting yourself around there was pretty critical. Just learning that, respecting the singers, respecting the 13:00drum, respecting the songs.

Anderson: Do you remember the first time you sang?

Plumley: I think I was twelve or thirteen. I started a interest. I was singing a little bit through school but not a whole lot. I know that when I really started singing, my dad got me a little-bitty drum. Unfortunately, I lost it. It's kind of like if I wasn't meant to have it at this certain point in life, I was meant to have it earlier but maybe not later. It may come back to me. It may not. I'm hoping someone is using it right now. He got this little drum for me, and I would just sit in my room and sing songs, and practicing hitting the drum and keeping that timing.

People hear it as just yelling or something, but there's melodies in it, what we call vocables. There's not really words, but you're singing a melody. I can 14:00compare it to when we're teaching, like a music teacher teaching someone how to sing, "Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Do." You have those type of syllables. Well, there is very certain syllables in our Native singing kind of similar to that, not necessarily but you're able to carry a tune with it, have that melody, so a lot of part of the song is that melody.

Anderson: Many people haven't ever heard of your form of art before. Can you tell me a little bit about what you do?

Plumley: I've always sang traditional songs as far as traditional powwow songs, traditional Otoe songs, even some peyote. I'm even starting to learn some of the northern tribes. As far as hand drum songs, I know Otoes have more of what we 15:00call War Mother songs that talk about the mothers and what they went through during when their sons were away. Also with Round Dance songs. I've always felt that with some of the newer and contemporary music I listened to growing up, it was a lot of Motown, a lot of funk. I knew the Temptations, O'Jays, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder. Then at the same time, I listened to Prince, George Clinton, Parliament-Funkadelics, some of those, even Earth, Wind, and Fire, some of that funk, and then some of the ʼ90s hip hop, Kris Kross, Kid 'n' Play, Naughty by Nature, Salt-N-Pepa.

Some of those groups that made strides for their particular genre of music, or even starting new music. Even what we call dance music today, people call it techno. People call it electronica. It has that 4/4 beat, which started from disco but then went underground as the hip hop movement started right around then but went mainstream. You have two different genres of music that started one way and ended up another. Hip hop was very underground music, then in the mid-ʼ80s and ʼ90s, people started listening, able to put a beat on a tape and play it, and some guy rap to it, not needing records or a DJ. That whole movement went underground. Some of that went underground, but a lot of it went mainstream with the artists whereas dance music went underground.

Then into the ʼ90s and early 2000s, you see a lot of the raves and saw a lot of 17:00the big European techno, electronica things come up. I've always been fascinated with that 4/4 beat as far as dance music because it reminds me of the 4/4 beat of our Native American drums, our big drum at the powwow, that feeling you have when you hear that drum and that feeling. You can even feel it. It's a big drum. You could consider it a bass drum. Just hearing that beat, you kind of feel it. Same thing with bass, same thing with some of the music nowadays, where previously you had that 4/4 beat. I've always been intrigued and pushed to that beat as opposed to a lot of Native Americans who I've ran into. They can go dance at the powwows, and they can listen to the music, but when they go into a nightclub or something, it's like you did something very wrong against the taboo 18:00of playing dance music.

They want, really, hip hop or rap to hardcore rap, and stuff that, like--none of the music that they listen to talks about what they've gone through. They're just, "Oh, I like this song." I'm like, "You're not even listening to the words." Sometimes I can't see that, as far as yeah, they dance to the 4/4 beat during powwows, but then when they go to a club, it's totally a broken beat and a slower tempo of hip hop or rap, something like that. Even country has some of that 4/4 beat. That's some of the things I like to do as far as I want to bring traditional singing, some of the songs and some of the melodies into kind of a 19:00mainstream music such as dance music to where it's easier for me to sing to it and flow to it. At the same time, I can at least manipulate it or even change it. Even if I write something that doesn't have any Native influence, the melody is a native melody or something.

Anderson: So you incorporate a lot of traditional music--

Plumley: Yes.

Anderson: --within more current music. How did the public receive your new form of art?

Plumley: Some liked it. I know there some that just like, "You shouldn't put that and that and that together. That's been for over here. That's been for over here." At the same time, I'm like, not a whole lot of people know about Native music. Not a whole lot of people understand it. They just hear it as gibberish. If I can somehow connect it with something that they know, maybe that can help them out and understand it more. It's really difficult when you hear someone, 20:00even someone who's come from hip hop/rap, listening to what they call East Coast or West Coast music trying to bring them into hearing Native American music. All they hear is, "Oh, that's just a lot of people making noise with their mouth."

You can even bring them into the dance music. "Oh, this is the same music over and over and over." No, you have the same beat over and over, but each song is different, different bass lines, different melodies, things like that. They're continuously mixed because a) we want people to dance. Now, in Native American singing, you don't have that continuous beat. You have a song that plays for a little bit until they get through the song. There's a stop, and then they start another song. They can continuously go through that whole routine for thirty minutes to an hour. Like at the Denver March Powwow, there's thirty-seven, forty 21:00drum groups that are there that are singing. One starts as soon as another one gets through, the next drum group starts, sings a song, and keeps going through in a tribal until the committee or someone says, "Okay, we're done. Let's have some contests," or, "Let's do something, "We have a special," or something. You can keep on going like that.

Sometimes people just kind of freak out sometimes. Some really enjoy and like hearing the difference and seeing Native music being brought to the forefront, brought to contemporary music. Some have done it well, and some have crashed and burned. I've heard some music where I'm just like, "Wow." It sounded--they clashed too much. Either they put the wrong melodies together or put the wrong songs together. I even heard some people try to do like a little mashup and not 22:00even a whole lot of manipulating. They're like, "Oh, this is a great song," and I'm like, "No it's--."

As far as me, I started as a DJ. This is some of the music I wanted to do. It started because of that. We have a term in DJing. You're mixing two songs together, and you want to keep them on the same beat, the same tempo. If one goes off the other, you start hearing like a horse, or it doesn't sound right. The beats are not hitting together. It's all jumbled up. We would call that a train wreck. A lot of times, I've heard some people's music that's just, is just wrecks. There's some newer groups, a newer group that's coming out, kind of doing something a little bit different. I appreciate some of the new people trying to push it together. I guess with me, I've had stuff. I just haven't 23:00really published it yet. I've performed it live but haven't really published it yet. I'm at that point to where I need to finish the rest of my album and put it out there and see how people react to it.

Anderson: How have your educational experiences impacted your career as an artist?

Plumley: Probably out of high school a couple years, I was doing vo tech. Then, there is a eight-year span there that I started DJing, and that was all I was doing. I started writing music and composing. Never had any formal classes. I was just learning on my own. I knew that I wanted to at least get a degree or something because I wasn't making enough money to keep up my musical habit. Being a DJ and also being a producer, there's newer stuff you want to get, or there's certain types of equipment you want to get. If you don't have the money 24:00for it, then you're out. If you don't have enough money to promote yourself or get CDs or get cards or get t-shirts or something to promote yourself, then you're not really moving forward. It takes money to make money, unfortunately.

I decided to go into college. I actually got into University of Oklahoma in the school of music before I was accepted there, before even in the university, as a composer. I had a different outlook of music. I've always been hip hop, rap, dance music, stuff like that, so doing a whole 180 of learning classical music, writing classical music, to even writing electro-acoustic music. You take numerous different sounds, or even the same sound, but manipulating it to where 25:00you're creating like an orchestra with sound. Now, it's not going to sound musically. It's going to sound totally off the wall, but if you really listen to it, there's some musical elements to it, there's a rise and fall, how music builds up, breaks away. You would prelude, two verses, a chorus, and stuff like that, but still you're listening to sound, as opposed to an actual orchestra. Kind of broadened my horizons as far as that, thinking of new ways to incorporate Native voices and drums.

I did a track called (I can't remember now) "Path of the Moonlight" or something. I was thinking of it as far as there was drums, there was singing, 26:00there was flutes, there was some deer toes. There was some wind, some different elements. I didn't really think of how it would sound. I know my mom listened to it when I performed it. I played it, and she was like, "You know, I was thinking of maybe this is what it sounded like, people who were traveling from the east to the west in Indian Territory, something similar like that of different aspects and stuff and walking to unknowns." I thought that was pretty interesting that I know my mother had no idea if the music was right or anything. For her to listen to that and make that assumption in where I kind of thought that could be it, but I wasn't for sure. When she said it, I think I changed the title to something like "Evening in the Woods" or "Evening of 27:00Walking" or something. I can't remember exactly what it was. It's been a while since I even brought it out. I know I have it on my SoundCloud account. I got some people to at least listen to it. It's electroacoustic. It's a bunch of sounds, but I think it's artistically done.

With the art form and stuff, trying to put it all together, it can be tough. I was trying to learn it as far as an educational experience, but I kind of got to a point where I couldn't really pass the sight singing or ear training because my ears have been trained differently than contemporary and the western music or anything like that. Some of the notes that I sing, or people sing, in different songs fall in between the keys. It's another different music. I can't remember exactly what the scale would be called for that. That's probably a master's 28:00student in the musicology department. (Laughter)

I would hear the C on a piano, and it would give me, like, a little, small melody to sing. I could sing it fine going up, but then when I come down, I change keys in minor. I change the minor key, but when I came back up, Iwould finish right where I started on C. A couple of the professors were trying to understand how I did that. I was like, "Well, a lot of our singing was you would start a song and everyone would match you." When I'm singing in the choir, I'm fine as long as I hear someone, a certain group of people, singing my certain part. I could match them and then sing with them. If it's just me, I may or may not be in key or have the right notes because we've always been--you sing the 29:00song. You sing how you sing. You're not singing to a scale. You're singing of how you feel.

A lot of times, the traditional powwow songs, you start lower pitch in each, we'll call it push-up, or each start. You have the song as far as the start, and you have the second, which mimics the start, and then you have the first verse of the song. If it was southern or northern, you have three honor beats. Northern has it to a certain point where the song ends, there's like a short break, and it comes back on the one. It's usually one-two, one-two. Even though it sounds like a 4/4 beat, it's one-two, one-two. A little bit easier to understand, but it comes back in on the one with the second verse. Southern has the three verses. Of the three, it's like one, two, three, and then start with 30:00the second verse. When the second verse is over, you start the lead again, so it's another cycle.

I was always taught that you would start the first one lower. The second one you come a little higher. The third and the fourth, some say, "Kick it up," but we start hitting the drum harder. We kind of crescendo. You would sing higher pitch there, and then little bit higher on the fourth. There's got to be a level where if you continue on the song for a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh time, you've got to stay at that same level four. Maybe you can even drum it down to the third one, but you never want to drop way back down. Once you kick it up, you've got to stay at those two. Trying to balance that and putting that into music and stuff, I just made a decision, "I probably can't get through this. I can try 31:00really hard, but I know that my heart is wanting to write music on my own and do things, not be really classical trained."

Even though I love the music theory, I love doing the musical stuff, I really wanted to write a--I still, probably to this day, am going to do it eventually, write a cello and like a clarinet, but have them talking like two women. The older woman is the cello, and the younger woman is the clarinet. Yet at the same time, I want them talking seriously, in the same time, joking around like a grandmother and granddaughter. She's getting on to her, but at the same time they're both joking and laughing about certain things, like they are talking about men, or they're talking about boyfriends, or they're talking about certain relations. At the same time, there are certain points of seriousness involved. I even thought about doing like a little group of flutes, or group of clarinets, 32:00or group of trombones. They're guys, but they're all talking like--it's kind of how Native men talk about women or something like that. They're all laughing and joking, things like that.

I did write a four-piece flute that each piece was a different Western flute. It was alto, piccolo, soprano, and--no, bass, piccolo, soprano, and alto. In it, I talked about where I came from with my dad and learning, to making the transition to be student to teacher, being someone who looked up to my dad, to being in his position. Now people are looking up to me, that whole changing of things.

Anderson: What are some of the struggles you've had as a Native American artist?

Plumley: Publicity, getting my name out there. I have my DJ name as Olywurld. Not a whole lot of people know it. Some do; some don't. Just marketing, getting out there, even to get like a logo to symbolize kind of Native, but at the same time kind of more of a symbol as well. It can be a struggle just to be out there because a lot of the artists and a lot of the companies are looking for, like, American Idol types, the boy band types, or the girls, or the sexiness, you know. They're looking for all that because that's what sells, but they're not really looking for artists or our music and stuff.

I even know some guys that constantly struggle to make it like that. They may have a few albums out, but they still can't make that mainstream. Some are 34:00trying for mainstream. Some just want to make music and let people think and listen. One of my good friends, Quese IMC, he went to Brooklyn to MC, and he met a lot of the people who are doing things, a lot of the influential people of the hip hop era that started in the ʼ80s and ʼ90s, DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa. Who else did he meet? I think he met Grand Wizard Theodore. Some of these guys were the first DJs, the first musicians to put some of the hip hop beats together. Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation was very influential. For him to meet those people in that circle of him being a hip hop MC was great. It was just like, man, if I met some people as far as dance music producers in my travels along with the guy who produced for Paul Oakenfold, Tiesto, Bad Boy 35:00Bill, Benny Benassi. Trying to think of who else.

Deadmau5. He's been really big. I met him when he first started out. He didn't have the whole head or whole mouse thing. It was before that. Him and a guy named Chris Lake from London, they were just kind of like me, just goofy, wanting to play dance music. Meeting them in different places, going to different places to DJ and to listen to music and listen to other artists was great, but the same time they've got so many people trying to fight and trying to get noticed. A lot of times you can step on the wrong people or hurt the wrong people. We forget what the main thing was that's just making music, making people dance, and making people like it, and at the same time trying to promote 36:00diversity and let people hear your culture. It's been a real struggle as far as that to at least get your name out there and at least get a fan base.

Anderson: Have there been any instances where you feel as though you've had to choose between the traditional way and the Western or American music?

Plumley: It has. There's been some times where I was like, man, if I just make that one pop, catching, hook American song, maybe I can have everyone else listen to my stuff. At the same time, if I make that song, people are going to want more of that type of song and not what I really want. It's a struggle of where do I cross that line. Where do I leave my traditions and be mainstream? I can't leave my traditions because that's me. That's how I've grown up. I've 37:00never had an option because that's always been me. It's always how I lived, how I've been raised. As far as those ideas, those thoughts that we call teachings of our ways, it would be bad to go one way and just totally lose yourself as far as your upbringing.

One day you'll look yourself in the mirror and go, "Who am I now? I knew who I was then, but I took this route, and now who am I?" You may look at yourself one time, and you're Native, you're proud, you sing, you dance, do all this stuff. Then five years later, you're just in your room composing music. You're not getting out there. You're not dancing. You're not seeing the people. You're just making things because people like it. You try to find that line of where do you 38:00give in, or do you stay your course.

I can't think of this composer's name. He's done numerous stuff. I think he was about eighty-six or eighty-seven at the time. It was Struinski or Starenski or something. I can't think of his name. My professor, Dr. Marvin Lamb at OU, he presented this gentleman's music to us. Really interesting, really among the bizarre. I've never heard anything like it before. It was a mixture of electronics, of contemporary Western music, and then things, just something different added to it. He was saying that there was a time when he did give in and write 1920s and ʼ30s jingles.

He made little commercials, but it got to the point where that's not the music 39:00he wanted to make. He composed the music that he wanted, and he said in one of his interviews, "Write the music that you love, that you feel. Your audience will find you." I've always kind of kept that in my mind of, yes, I could make that mainstream pop song and sell it to Justin Timberlake or Bieber or Beyoncé or something. At the same time, I want to write the stuff that I want to write, and at the same time use my Native songs, customs, and try to preserve them at the same time of writing newer music.

Anderson: Putting a contemporary spin on traditional music has, I'm sure, inspired others to follow your footsteps. What advice would you give young artists that want to venture out and find their identities as Native artists?

Plumley: I would say let other people listen to your stuff. I know that you 40:00might like it, like, "Oh, yeah, it's great!" Then someone might say, "No--." Just let others use it, but the same time be respectful with the songs. Don't really try to chop up the songs. Keep their meaning into it, their singing, or the parts, even the words and stuff, but don't try to, as they say, chopped and screwed, or change it all up. Don't tear it up too much because you'll lose some of the meaning the song originally has already. You want to bring that into your music and make it better, as opposed to getting something and chopping it all up and making it totally different.

I've heard a dubstep Native song, and it was just like, why chop it all up when you could have used that small melody of that singing, that person's singing, 41:00and made it into something that fit with it? Just be yourself. Be respectful of the artists and other people and other music. Don't downright criticize right then and there. See some of their mistakes and capitalize it onto yours. At the same time, if you see someone struggling, and you know that little bit of advice can help them, help them. There are so few Native artists as far as music, musicians, and composers in music. You want to help out anyone you can.

In our nature and our customs, we've always had that sense of community and sense of helping people and helping one another. I know in the past hundred or so years, we've always been taught in school and stuff about you, me, I, fight 42:00and fend for yourself, but there's not that many of us. The more we can help each other, I think the more we can grow as an artist, as an artist group, as an artist base that maybe we can at least get acknowledged.

I know there's some artists out there that completely write contemporary music. They're Natives, but some of it they try to incorporate traditional stuff. Some of the melodies I hear are not really traditional. They're all kind of Western contemporary. They're just kind of piggyback on the thing of them being Native. That's great, you know, but I really haven't heard some of their traditional songs in some of their stuff. I haven't heard some music from some guys from the Northeast that are like, "We're Mohawk," or, "We're Iroquois," or something like 43:00that. I've even heard some of their songs and some of the songs they sing and stuff. Even listened to some of their music, and am like, okay, where is the influence at?

I was up for an award with a piece of music I wrote. It was the Native-E Music Awards. There's some group in Gallup that tried to make a award show that kind of was supposed to rival the Nammys, the Native American Music Awards. Never did. I think it lasted a couple years, two or three years, and that was it. Myself, Terry Tsotigh, and a few other artists--I never knew them. I never knew who they were. There was a thing online. You could go listen to their submissions. Terry's was blues, blues harmonica, kind of contemporary. I could hear some of the melodies were Kiowa because he's a Kiowa Straight Dancer and 44:00I've seen him Gourd Dance. Some of the melodies I could hear were literally the Kiowa Gourd Dance or a little bit of some of their songs, just a tad. I could hear it. It kind of made everything better.

With some of those other submissions, I was just like, "Where is the Native influence? Where's that pentatonic structure of something?" Wasn't too much into it. Some of it was a little bit new age, and I'm thinking to myself, "Where were they going with this music?" At the same time, are they really traditional people, or Natives that just found out they are Native and want to write some music and submit it because they just found out they're Native or something like that, that they weren't brought up in those upbringings of songs and that kind of culture stuff. You can tell from a person's music how they influence some of 45:00the traditions, some of the culture into it.

I like Terry Tsotigh because he plays a lot of blues and stuff, so I can relate. He mixes in some of that, some of his flute music and a little bit of Native vocals into it. I did a song called "Bounce" that I made the hip hop beat similar to mid-ʼ90s hip hop. In the style of hip hop, I made the beat and then recorded it. I played it, and then I freestyled a Native American flute on top of it. Didn't really have any notes or anything like that or any paper saying, "Okay, this is the type of holes to play." I just went with it. I think it took me maybe one, two recordings, and that was it. I was happy with the recording and just the fact that it got selected to participate. I think I came a close 46:00second to Terry's. He won the award, but just to be in the same breadth as him and all that he's done in the past twenty, thirty years of playing the blues was something.

I've heard of artists and stuff that represent Chickasaw or Choctaw or something like that, but sometimes some of the music seems too far Western, and there's not enough Native influence. Then again, I could be wrong. Just from what I've heard from some of these other artists, I think they need a little more traditional stuff mixed in with it. You can blend it very well, very tedious, but I just know that maybe they haven't found that way. Maybe they haven't put it all together quite right. I haven't been able to talk with anyone or visit 47:00with anyone. Some could be stink. (Laughter)

I know Carlos Nakai is known to be just very terrible. People put him on the pedestal, "Oh, he's a great flutist." I'm like, "There's a lot of great flutists. That's not the point of playing." You're not trying to be the world baddest flutist. You're playing the music for people. Ultimately, that flute was courting. It was a type of courting for a male to court a Native woman. I see a lot of women playing the flute, and I'll say, "Okay, now, is she courting a man?" (Laughter) There's been a lot of nice flute music that's come out that I listen to. There again, what's the line of calling it traditional and calling it contemporary? Like what I played was contemporary, but yet I use a traditional 48:00instrument in a contemporary manner.

Anderson: Right.

Plumley: I would like to see more artists bridge that gap as far as using traditional instruments contemporary, but then also same time using contemporary instruments traditionally. The more we can preserve our songs, the more we can preserve our culture, at the same time blending it in, I think that's going to help us carry us in the years in the future.

Anderson: Well, it sounds like you've had a wonderful and prosperous year. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Plumley: Just as far as other artists and as far as people who are listening to music, just stay open minded with some of the Native music. Listen andalways be respectful. A lot of our songs, a lot of our language is kind of dying, so a lot 49:00of our history are in our songs and in our culture. If it is from the Cherokee Stomp Dance, to a Navajo prayer song, to some of the powwow songs of the three affiliate tribes of Hidatsa, Mandan, Arikara, to even in Canada to the Crees, to the east of the Mohawks, and Iroquois, Pequots, stuff like that, we have all these different songs and stuff, just preserving them. There's a lot of our songs talk about things have happened in life, things like battles and war, things that'sgone on. Even the Poncas have a song called a children's song. It talks about the children that died during the flu epidemics that hit the world, I think in the late 1800s and early 1910s, 1914, 1920, somewhere through there. 50:00They wrote a song about, "Where are all the children? Where have they gone to?" Songs like that that have a lot of meaning still need to be continued on.

At the same time, I know there's a lot of young singers, a lot of powwow singers that are making new powwow songs, making a lot of hand drum songs. Some are very beautiful, and some are very funny. Even some of the traditional powwow songs have a lot of meaning and have a thought process behind it. One of my friends, Charles Nikolole, he was sick in the hospital in Connecticut after the Mashantucket Pequot, their big powwow called Schemitzun. He got sick. He got in the way of something that wasn't meant for him. He was trying to do something with someone else, using as we call it bad Indian medicine. He kind of got in the way. He wasn't expected to live, but one of my good friends, Sheevers, made 51:00him a song. It's a very, very beautiful song. New artists like that, singers writing more contemporary music can perpetuate our singing to the point of combining traditional songs with newer Native American songs. Then we can also influence that into other mainstream stuff, just to let people know that we're still here. We've never gone and will probably never leave.

Anderson: All right, well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Plumley: No problem.

------- End of interview -------