Joy Harjo & Band
LowDown
October 25, 2024
The sold-out room starts filling up long before the lights dim at 8:15pm, when Joy Harjo and a three-piece band take the stage. The audience, clustered in groups of three or four around small bistro tables, quiets. A slow drumbeat starts.
Born in Tulsa, Harjo is now a very famous poet, lauded by Oprah and immortalized on a NASA spacecraft. A three-term former U.S. Poet Laureate often inspired by her Muscogee heritage, she works with themes of Indigenous rights, feminism and spirituality in her writing, music and activism. Concerts like this are rare for her. Judging by the crowd’s devoted attention, they know how lucky they are to witness this one.
Harjo’s voice exists in a liminal space between speech and song. Clear and resonant, a little like Laurie Anderson but more grounded. Her words are deliberately paced, sometimes deadpan or matter-of-fact. When she sings, it’s with celebration and subtle humor. The overall effect sounds simultaneously ancient and experimental.
She regales us with fables and histories. The saxophone is an instrument of war, according to Harjo, and was invented by the trickster Rabbit. She plays “Witchi Tai To,” a tribute to Jim Pepper (the American jazz saxophonist who pioneered Native jazz-rock fusion in the 1980s), “One Day There Will Be Horses,” and songs from her 2021 album I Pray for My Enemies. It’s all over a little before 11pm.
The genre is difficult to define. Before the show, Nathan Eicher (who plays standup bass with Harjo) described it to me as indie folk meets experimental jazz. But there’s a third, secret ingredient that I don’t know the right word for. Harjo herself oscillates between her instruments: voice, saxophone, flute. Eicher and the rest of the band—Josh Westbrook on guitar and George Toumayan on drums—don’t play shows with her very often. Our world moves fast, and something special happens when these four focus on a center point—almost like an incantation.
That seems fitting: Harjo doesn’t just live and work in Tulsa. She prays here. In her evocative phrase, she “argues with music” here. I honestly loved every minute of this performance. Days later, it lingers in my mind, reminding me that even in our troubled world, there is still room for ceremony and space for magic.
