Piece Comment

Review of OCCANEECHI POW WOW


In this piece a member of a small Texas tribe, John Black Feather, takes us behind the scenes of what goes on in a public Pow Wow. The piece has a number of nice scenes and uses a lot of natural sound. The production itself was well done and well mixed. There wasn’t really anything new or insightful in the piece. It was a loose narrative strung together with excerpts of Native American drumming. After having extensive exposure to the Navajo and Hopi of northern Arizona in my previous job, I think there can be a tendency sometimes to treat many topics involving Native American customs and traditions almost too gently and reverently. The tradition certainly deserves the attention. But what is the intention of this radio piece? Who is the intended audience? There have been so many radio pieces on Pow Wows and this one didn’t cover enough territory for me and much of the information was almost too much at a surface level for such a lengthy feature report.