Presented by Springboard Performance and Making Treaty 7 Cultural Society in partnership with The Confluence.
Teach Me a Song is an installation work featuring Indigenous songs that have been translated, transcribed, reinterpreted and preserved as photos, scores, textiles, and recordings.
It is an ongoing collaborative project that invites Indigenous community members to share songs that hold personal, cultural, or familial significance. These songs and the process of teaching and learning them are then captured in a multiplicity of ways.
The project foregrounds the agency of song as a carrier of language, memory, and identity. By moving between oral tradition, notation, and visual form, Teach Me a Song challenges fixed ideas of authorship and composition, instead centering relational practices and collective knowledge.
Workshops are central to the project. Participants share songs and engage in conversation around language, meaning, and transmission. Each iteration is shaped by the local community, resulting in a growing, place-based archive.
The resulting installation includes printed scores, textiles, and audio components that reflect the voices and contributions of participants.
Featured Artists
Elisa Harkins · Performer, Creator, Musician
Elisa Harkins is a composer, artist, and citizen of the Muscogee Nation of Oklahoma, also of Cherokee descent. She lives and works on the Muscogee (Creek) Reservation. Her work spans music, performance, video, and installation, centering Indigenous language, song, and sound as living cultural practices.
Since 2017, Harkins has been performing and releasing music that integrates Muscogee (Creek) and Cherokee language with contemporary electronic production. Her work engages hymn traditions, translation, and the role of sound as a carrier of memory and identity.
She has presented work at venues including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Remai Modern, and On the Boards, and has received support from Creative Capital, First Peoples Fund, and other organizations. Her recordings have been released through Bear Clan Records and Western Front.
Her ongoing projects include Teach Me a Song and Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ. She is currently developing new work combining ceremonial song, synthesizers, and experimental composition.
"At the heart of Harkins’s practice is the preservation of Indigenous language and music through activation and performance. In contrast to the history of ethnomusicology, which has often centered a settler perspective, Harkins’s work focuses on relationships between Indigenous people and offers a path toward greater sovereignty."
Laura Paige Kyber
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Teach Me a Song is a community-centered project, and collaborators shift with each iteration. Participants include Indigenous community members who contribute songs, stories, and knowledge through workshops and conversations. Their contributions shape the content, form, and direction of each presentation.
Credits:
- Elisa Harkins – artist, facilitator
- Ian Byers Gamber – video and photography
- Evan Clayburg – video and color correction
- Mark Kuykendall – recording, mixing, and mastering
- Community participants – collaborators and contributors
Funders and Supporters:
Crisp Ellert Art Museum, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, The New Gallery, Halsey Institute, Mid-America Arts Alliance, Center for Native Futures
Collaborators:
- Louis Gray (Osage)
- Eli Hirtle (Nêhiyaw (Cree), British, German)
- Cheyenne Rain LeGrande (Nêhiyaw Iskwew)
- Alice Sweat, Emma Fish, Vtvssv Lavatta, Jewel Lavatta, Reina Micco, and Rita Gopher (Seminole)
- Agalisiga Mackey (Cherokee)
- Kalyn Fay (Cherokee) Travis Mammedaty (Kiowa, Seneca-Cayuga)
- Marilyn Contois (Saulteaux, Cowessess First Nation)
- The White Buffalo Singers (Blackfoot)
Check out our other program;
Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ
Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ is an Indigenous futuristic pop concert also featuring Elisa Harkins.
Happening in tandem with Teach Me a Song on May 23 & 24.
Teach Me a Song is made possible by
