Above

Texts translated from Wintu dream-songs by Dorothy Demetracopoulou (1905-1975)

I. There Above

there above
at the Earth-lodge of the South
spirits are wafted along the roof and fall
flowers bend heavily on their stems

II. Dandelion

the spirits of people will rise above
swaying like women
while men dance
with dandelion flowers in their hands

III. You and I Shall Go

you and I shall go
you and I shall go along the Milky Way
along the trail of flowers
you and I shall go
picking flowers on our way
you and I shall go

PROGRAM NOTE

Dream songs formed the chief feature of the Dream Dance religion of the Wintu people, Native Americans who were indigenous to the northern part of what is now California’s Sacramento Valley. These songs were believed to be given in sleep by a dead friend or relative. The Land of the Dead is referred to as “above,” and the Milky Way was considered the road that the spirits traveled to reach their final resting place. There were about 12,000 Wintu in 1770, and after years of devastation from malaria and other diseases brought by Europeans, only one thousand remained by 1910, and only five hundred in 1930. For the Wintu, death was only a transitional state into a higher realm—something not to be feared, but embraced. In setting these poems, my primary aim was to capture their beautiful optimism regarding death and the afterlife, filtering impressions of these cultures through my own musical language, without resorting to Western caricature or corruption of any native music. Some of the melodic and harmonic material is derived from the pentatonic scale, common to thousands of folk music traditions around the world. Perfect fourths and fifths dominate movements two and three, while the opening movement, which was written last, contains mostly parallel interlocking sixths. This piece was commissioned and premiered by Joseph Ohrt and the Central Bucks West Choir (Doylestown, PA) in Toronto, Canada, in April of 2006.