Ámmo'naka' explores connections between humans and land

When “Ámmo'naka” receives its world premiere on Earth Day on Wednesday, a giant stacked choral chord will burst out of silence, with a wide-open, ringing-crystal voicing, sung fortissimo. The sopranos will squeal out some of the highest sung notes composers ever call for. The chord will suddenly stop, and the choir all speak, each in their own rhythm, the first line of the text, a babel of unintelligibility because of the overlap.

Audiences will hear another sudden silence, and the choir will sing the words, together and now understandable when “Ámmo'naka” premieres at Loyola University Chicago through the efforts of the EcoVoice Project.

The words are “Ámmo'naka poshki',” meaning “In a beginning / Our Mother” in the Chickasaw language. The libretto, original poetry written in Chickasaw by the poet Lokosh, tells the traditional Chickasaw story about the creation of the world and the relationship between humans and the land.

“What I tried to do with this project is convey our traditional worldview that the earth is considered our mother,” said Lokosh, a maker and poet based in Oklahoma. In the first movement, the creator called He Who Sits Above selects the crayfish to bring mud up from the depths to fashion the land, and the mountains and valleys are shaped by the wings of a bird, traditionally a raven or a buzzard. “I prefer the buzzard because I think it’s an unlikely progenitor,” Lokosh said.

The second movement describes the life of Chickasaws in their ancestral homeland in what’s now the American South, near the Mississippi and the Tombigbee Rivers, before the tribe’s forcible removal to the Indian Territory on the Trail of Tears. The third movement describes the obligations of living Chickasaw people to their ancestors and asserts their continued existence.

The Chicago-based EcoVoice Project produces projects relating music to the natural world, with the aim of promoting sustainability and stewardship for the planet. Previous concerts, often celebrating solstices or Earth Day, have included Sarah Kirkland Snider’s popular “Mass for the Endangered” and works by the environmental-activist-turned-composer John Luther Adams from his “Music and the Anthropocene.”

The composer of “Ámmo'naka,” Jerod Impichchaachaaha' Tate, works with musical elements drawn from his Chickasaw ancestry, using tools of modern concert music. “When I’m composing I am literally transported into our homelands in the deep woods of Mississippi,” he said. “I feel very connected to the elements every time I’m composing, so the trees, the animals, the weather, the sun, thunderstorms — the environment is a very big part of my ethos.”

Tate aims to create a musical sphere where the specific Chickasaw story can express the relationship of all humanity to Earth. “All of our ancient cultures are beautifully rooted in our environments,” he said, “and so I want music that resonates to all people who have a sense of homeland.”

Lokosh agrees. The Chickasaw worldview harmonizes with EcoVoice’s message of environmental stewardship. “In our traditional worldview, there’s no hierarchy,” he said. “I’m no better or worse than a deer or a turtle. When we hunt, you’re killing a relative. It’s not a prey animal, it’s not a game animal — it’s just like you are.”

“Ámmo'naka” itself is also an act of conservation — not ecological, but linguistic. It’s unusual to create new artistic works in Chickasaw, although not unprecedented: Tate and Lokosh collaborated on the opera “Loksi' Shaali'” (“Shell Shaker”), the first opera ever presented in an American Indian language when it premiered in 2022.

Lokosh said that even though only 30 or so native Chickasaw speakers remain, multiple ways of promoting the language are underway, such as an immersive day care for very young children, video Chickasaw lessons and the construction of new terms for modern technologies. “Poetry is another form of life for the language,” he said. “We’re pushing for a vitality or return to a time when the language was fully socialized.”

At the end of the piece, big, open chords similar to those at the opening return. The text translates as “This is the way that we shall be,” the sopranos are back in the stratosphere, and it’s loud. One final shout and the piece ends. The crayfish and the buzzard have done their work, and the creation has emerged into the world.