Hauntingly beautiful lyric and dramatic poems written and spoken by John Neihardt exquisitely set to music by his grandson, Robin Neihardt

13 MP3 Songs in this album (59:41) !
Related styles: Spoken Word: Inspirational, Classical: Programmatic music, Spiritual

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Details:
A year or so ago, I found vinyl recordings my grandfather made nearly 40 years ago containing recitations of his lyric and dramatic poems. I remembered the recordings from earlier days, and wanted to make these recordings available in a more modern format. The first step was acquiring a record turntable, for I hadnât owned one in years. The vinyl records were then played and recorded into a digital format on the hard drive of my computer, saving them as wav files. Once in digital format, numerous hours were spent cleaning up the files by removing the âclicksâ and âpopsâ so charateristic of vinyl records. The new digital audio files were then arranged on 4 CDs.

While listening to this new-found voice of my grandfather, I decided to compose original music for some of the lyric poems and, in the studio, digitally combine the music with the recorded voice of John Neihardt. As a music composer, and always looking for a new project, I felt if the desired effect could be achieved, this could be a way of honoring his legacy.

On many of the pieces, I was able to reduce the dynamic rhythm of his recitation to musical note values (half note, quarter note eighth note, etc.) which then became primary rhythms in the compositions; thus tying the music and the lyrics together. The result of these endeavors is this CD. I sincerely hope you enjoy listening.

John Gneisenau Neihardt (1881-1973)

He is a word sender. This world is like a garden and over it go his words like rain, and where they go they leave everything greener. After his words have passed, the memory of them shall stand long in the West like a flaming rainbow. âBlack Elk

Eleven-year-old John Neihardt moved to Wayne, Nebraska in 1892 with his mother and two sisters. Heâd already lived in Illinois, in a sod house in northwestern Kansas and in the Missouri River town of Kansas City. This exposure to the richness and variety of life on the plains obviously shaped the direction of his life work. But Neihardt himself pointed to a âfever dreamâ he had at this age, in which he saw himself floating through space and felt the presence of a âspirit brother,â as the event that determined his life work as a poet and inspired the content of that work.

Neihardt graduated from Wayne Normal College at 16 and taught country school for a short time. Heâd been writing poetry since age 12 and, upon moving to Bancroft in 1900, turned to that vocation, working also as an owner-editor of the Bancroft Blade, and as a clerk for a trader on the Omaha Reservation. His acquaintance with the Omaha and Winnebago Indians led him to an interest in the Sioux, their customs and traditions. He traveled the plains and lived the land first hand. He became a published author at 19 . . . married at 27 . . . started his major work, The Cycle of the West at 31 . . . and became Nebraskaâs Poet Laureate at 40. At 45 he was literary editor for the St. Louis Post Dispatch, and at 68 became poet-in-residence and lecturer in English at the University of Missouri. In his 80s, Neihardt returned to Nebraska, living with friends and continuing his writing and personal appearances. He was working on the second volume of his autobiography when he died at age 92. He accumulated many honors and accolades for a lifetime of contributions. He is fondly remembered by people of all ages in myriad ways.

âRobin Neihardt