A member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Joy Harjo served three consecutive terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019 to 2022, a distinction held by only a handful of writers in American history. She is the author of eleven books of poetry, including the Yale Bollingen Prize-winning Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light, and her honors span the PEN USA Literary Award, the American Book Award, a Griffin Prize shortlist, and a NAMMY for Best Female Artist. Her twelfth poetry collection, Cloud Runner, arrives this fall on W.W. Norton.
She is also, proudly, a Syos player. Joy came to the saxophone at almost forty, but jazz had been in her much earlier. "I didn't know the words 'jazz' or 'trumpet,'" she writes, "but I didn't need them. The music found a place within me to take root and beget a hunger for what jazzy, cool blues offered." When she finally picked up the horn, it was the spiritual soulfulness of John Coltrane, Miles Davis ,the Native elements in Gato Barbieri's tone, and jazz musicians she’s met in local scenes across her life that drew her in. Joy discovered Syos after spotting a young saxophonist online wailing through a red mouthpiece and ordered one for herself. "It utterly opened up my sound and reach in a way that I didn't think possible on any mouthpiece made of anything other than metal," she says. "I am a number one fan." She plays a Spark 6 Originals on alto and tenor, and a Spark 5 Originals on soprano.
Her new album, INSOMNIA AND SEVEN STEPS TO GRACE, was released April 24. Produced by Grammy-winning bassist and composer Esperanza Spalding, the record opens with saxophone and unfolds as a fusion of spoken word and jazz. Joy describes the project as an exploration of what emerges when she combines "rock, blues, funk, reggae, jazz, Native music and my poetry." Serene and solemn one moment, fierce and dissonant the next. Bass-forward arrangements summon water and forest. Flutes and the traditions of Mvskoke and Southwest Native music weave throughout. The album also includes "My Guy," a song Joy's mother wrote but never recorded. It's sung here by vocalist (and album producer) Esperanza Spalding, with an image of the original typewritten lyrics preserved in the liner notes.
Songs like "I Pray for My Enemies" confront civil unrest head-on, while Joy's generational poetry, woven throughout the album, rewards repeat listens, revealing metaphors, messages, and turns of phrase you may have missed the first time.
The album took shape, Joy writes, "during a time of thick-layered turmoil throughout our communities, our families, this country, globally, and this body we call 'Earth' in English, or 'Ekvnvcaky' in Mvskoke." Still, the work looks forward. "We will be nearly unrecognizable to generations following us when we emerge from the next opening. Still, those generations will look to us to understand who they are, to understand their cultural genealogy. They will look to our arts, to music, to poetry, to how we acted when confronted with injustice. This album is an offering."
What that offering sounds like, she describes elsewhere: "I feel how the quiver of a vibration of love can make a rhythm, and the rhythm can catch hold, and it can find its way in voices, music, actions, sounds, color, and light, and then there we are together, making coherence."
"We offer it humbly, with gratitude."
