Lakota Music Project

The Lakota Music Project is the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra’s flagship Bridging Cultures program. Through music, it brings Native and non-Native people together—acknowledging South Dakota’s history of racial tension while creating opportunities for connection, understanding, and friendship. We hope everyone who experiences a Lakota Music Project performance leaves with a greater sense of belonging and a deeper appreciation for the people, music, and traditions of our region. 

A Lakota Music Project concert typically brings together South Dakota Symphony Orchestra musicians, the Creekside Singers—a Lakota drumming group led by Emmanuel Black Bear (Oglala Lakota Sioux)—and acclaimed Dakota cedar flutist Bryan Akipa (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate). Each performs music from their own cultural traditions, and then the musicians come together to share works created especially for them. To date, the Lakota Music Project has commissioned six original works and one arrangement for Lakota artists and SDSO musicians to perform together. 

The Lakota Music Project embraces the following strategies to create each program:

• Provide positive, safe, open space for dialogue
• Explore what our different cultures share, rather than what makes them different
• Embrace the value of peaceful collaboration

The Lakota Music Project grew out of conversations between the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra and leaders from Lakota and Dakota communities. From the beginning, the goal was simple but meaningful: to bring Native and non-Native people together through music and foster deeper understanding through positive, respectful collaboration.

The first steps were taken in 2005, when tribal relations consultant and advocate Barry LeBeau arranged for SDSO Music Director Delta David Gier to meet with tribal leaders. Their first visit was to the Rosebud Reservation, where they met tribal elder Robert Moore. A gifted singer trained in both classical music at the Lamont School of Music and Lakota singing traditions, Moore became an important part of the original Lakota Music Project. During performances, he sang in both styles and joined the Porcupine Singers at the drum.

During that first journey across South Dakota, LeBeau and Gier also met Ronnie Theisz, professor emeritus of American Indian Studies at Black Hills State University and the author of several books about Lakota music and culture. Theisz has sung with both the Porcupine Singers and the Creekside Singers and has served as a trusted mentor to everyone involved in the project, including SDSO musicians.

Together, Theisz and Gier shaped the original Lakota Music Project program around four shared human experiences: love, war, grief, and celebration. Theisz also collaborated with composer Brent Michael Davids (Mohican/Munsee-Lenape) to select a traditional Lakota song for Black Hills Olowan, the first work commissioned especially for the Lakota Music Project. 

SDSO principal oboist Jeffrey Paul has also been an essential part of the project from its earliest days. He adapted his composition Desert Wind to include a Lakota song by Melvin Young Bear, keeper of the drum for the Porcupine Singers. Paul later composed Pentatonic Fantasy (including Wind on Clear Lake), and Songbird & Goose for Dakota cedar flutist Bryan Akipa. 

In 2013, composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate (Chickasaw) joined the project through New Music USA’s Music Alive program. He composed Waktégli Olówaŋ (Victory Songs) for the Lakota Music Project—a song cycle originally intended for Robert Moore to sing before Moore’s death. Tate returned in 2017 as the SDSO’s composer-in-residence and created the orchestra’s first Music Composition Academy, which brings Native and non-Native student composers together to develop and share their musical voices. 

Composer Ted Wiprud succeeded Tate as composer-in-residence in 2018 and continued the Music Composition Academies. He also created the Lakota Music Project’s arrangement of Amazing Grace.

You can get a more in depth look into the Lakota Music Project and the people behind it thanks to 
South Dakota Public Broadcasting. Check out these documentaries:
THE LAKOTA MUSIC PROJECT - travel back to 2009 when it first began.
"VICTORY SONGS": THE LAKOTA MUSIC PROJECT - how it's evolved into what it is today.

SHARED VISION TOUR: 2025

LAKOTA MUSIC PROJECT ALBUM