Like in so many other discussions about the history and culture of the United States, the contributions of Indigenous musicians to the quintessentially American art of jazz have long been neglected or utterly ignored.
Vocalist Julia Keefe, an enrolled member of the Nez Perce tribe who grew up in Spokane, Washington, has set about changing the conversation, one gig at a time. The increasingly prominent Brooklyn-based jazz vocalist introduced herself to the Bay Area last year with a series of high-profile dates, including at the SFJAZZ Center and Monterey Jazz Festival.
She returns with the Julia Keefe Indigenous Big Band for concerts Feb. 19 at Stanford’s Bing Concert Hall and Feb. 20 at Santa Cruz’s Kuumbwa Jazz Center. The 16-piece ensemble, which Keefe co-leads with Diné trumpeter Delbert Anderson, returns to Northern California for performances May 8 at UC Davis’ Mondavi Center and May 9 at Sonoma State’s Green Concert Center.
Maintaining a jazz orchestra has been a wallet-emptying enterprise ever since the swing era wound down after World War II, when even Count Basie had to break up his big band for a while. Keefe had been thinking about the possibility of creating an Indigenous jazz orchestra for years but it seemed unobtainable until she landed a major grant from South Arts in 2021.
“Delbert and I had talked about, wouldn’t it be cool to have an all-native big band, but we thought it was an otherworldly dream that would never come to fruition,” said Keefe, who also gives a free UC Berkeley Arts Research Center Talk on Feb. 18.
“When the grant came up Delbert called me and said ‘If you want to do the big band, this is the time.’ It’s a labor of love that’s mission and purpose driven.”
It’s a mission that has shaped Keefe’s creative evolution since she fell in love with jazz as a child entranced by Billie Holiday’s voice. She started gigging in her early teens, and had something of an epiphany when she discovered that pioneering big band vocalist Mildred Bailey, who Holiday cited as an influence, grew up on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation in Idaho before her family moved to Spokane.
“When I stumbled across Mildred Bailey it was the first time I saw someone like me in jazz,” Keefe said. “She was the entry point. Not only was Bailey Indigenous, she was from my part of the country and like me spent formative years in Spokane. Holy smokes!”
Known as the Rockin’ Chair Lady after one of her early hits, Bailey was the first female vocalist to sing with a jazz big band, touring with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra from 1929-33. While she played a crucial role in shaping Bing Crosby’s jazz-inspired phrasing and recorded dozens of classic tracks with the era’s greatest improvisers, Bailey has largely been forgotten since her early death in 1951 at the age of 44.
Keefe set about reclaiming this jazz matriarch, touring widely with her Mildred Bailey Project after premiering the program at the National Museum of the American Indian in 2009. Heady stuff for a 19-year-old, but she’d already spent years responding to queries about how her identity jibed with her jazz artist calling.
“Whenever I talked about myself as a Native American jazz musician people would ask, what do you mean by that?” Keefe said. “I felt these two things at the same time but I wasn’t able to exist in my entirety without Mildred Bailey. It started with dedicating a song to her and making that connection.”
Research into Bailey opened the door to a much wider history, including trombonist Big Chief Russell Moore (1912 –1983), a member of the Pima Tribe, and Kaw and Muscogee saxophone star Jim Pepper (1941–1992), whose unlikely hit arrangement of the peyote song “Witchi Tai To” figures prominently in the repertoire of Keefe’s Indigenous Big Band.
Along the way she connected with Delbert Anderson, a New Mexico-based trumpeter who started his own quest for Native American jazz artists around 2010 when alto sax great Bobby Watson suggested he check out Jim Pepper. His research also led him to numerous Black jazz artists with Native American ancestry, like trumpeter Don Cherry.
Music turned into a vehicle to reconnect with Navajo culture, and he’s created a body of jazz arrangements based on Diné “spinning songs” used to teach lessons. Teaming up with Keefe in the big band, they’ve cast a wide Indigenous net, bringing together musicians from across North America, including bassist/vocalist Mali Obomsawin, a citizen of Canada’s Odanak First Nation, and pianist Chantil Dukart, who hails from Alaska’s Tsimshian and Sugpiaq peoples.
“Everything took a turn when I looked back into my own culture,” Anderson said. “I’m still digging deep into Diné culture. I feel like we just touched the surface.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
JULIA KEEFE INDIGENOUS BIG BAND
When & where: 7:30 p.m. Feb. 19 at Bing Concert Hall in Stanford University; $16-$68; live.stanford.edu; 7 p.m. Feb. 20 at Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz; $26.25-$52.50; www.kuumbwajazz.org
www.kuumbwajazz.org
Artist talk: 5 p.m. Feb. 18 at Hearst Field Annex D23 at UC Berkeley; free; arts.berkeley.edu