www.jeffersonhour.org/page/weekly_columns/ -
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Published on: 4/7/2007
Last Visited: 4/7/2007
Kevin Locke (Tokeya Inajin) is a Lakota flute player, hoop dancer, storyteller and educator, and David Swenson is the founding director of the award-winning Makoche Recoding studio in downtown Bismarck.
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Swenson, who lives in Bismarck, has spent the past 11 years recording American Indian songs and stories and encouraging the preservation and dissemination of traditional Indian oral culture.
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Swenson is one of those rare non-Indians who is not only permitted, but actually invited to take his place at the sun dance.After almost 20 years of quiet, deeply respectful work with Indian drum groups, singers, dancers and storytellers, Swenson has built up a large fund of goodwill in Indian country.He has credibility, in part because the Indian community knows that there is not an exploitative bone in his body.
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Swenson is part musicologist and part '60s rocker.He's best known for his Indian record label, but more recently he has begun to get attention as a talented videographer.He wants to make documentaries.
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It's the recording for which Swenson seems most proud.