FireCrow day at Farmers Market

WINSTED — On Friday, Aug. 28, against the backdrop of Winsted’s afternoon traffic, the renowned Native American musician Joseph FireCrow brought a peaceful hush to the crowd gathered at the East End Park Farmers Market. 

FireCrow, a Winsted native, offered an array of songs and stories, switching between various flutes, percussion instruments and sometimes just solo vocals. 

Acknowledging the Farmers Market venue, he reminisced, “I’d love to look for wild turnips as a little boy. I’d know exactly what they looked like and where to find chokecherries and plums. It’s a good thing to know where your food comes from.”

FireCrow is originally from Montana but came to Winsted 18 years ago for his wife, who is a Winsted native.

“It’s nice to be here where the racial lines aren’t as drawn as they are near the reservation,” FireCrow said. “There’s so much diversity here. While there is a Native American community here, it’s very invisible. So Native Americans are sort of an anomaly.”

However, FireCrow said that he loves the Winsted community.

“It is a strong, beautiful thing to know where you come from,” FireCrow said. “But I have new relatives here in this community, and in our way of thinking, you are a part of my family and I’m a part of yours. This is my home now.”

Not that all Native American music is melancholy and sad, FireCrow said. 

Before launching into one upbeat number replete with lyrics in English, he explained how some elders were upset when English starting infiltrating Native American music. 

“But it was a good noise and the beat was there, and our young people were using it to communicate,” he said. “This is our version of rock ‘n’ roll.”

FireCrow said he has recently spent time in New York City participating in readings of a new musical called “Distant Thunder.” 

“The first Native American indigenous musical at this level in the U.S.,” he said. 

“And I realized, for as much traveling as I do across the country, mainstream America has no idea what we Native peoples are doing musically, crossing over into many good genres, from blues to rock ‘n’ roll to jazz, new age, even rap. I’ve done all of those, except the rap part. Maybe someday. The more you know and understand about other people, their stories and their songs, where they come from, makes you a better person. We can appreciate each other for our differences, but when we do that we realize we have so much in common.”

FireCrow said that the play was written by a good friend and is about a young man who goes back to the reservation to tell his father that his mother has passed away. “He must reconnect with the people and that is one of the hardest things to do, because they will always view you as an outsider, and the reverse discrimination is far worse,” FireCrow said.