NEWS

Free concert to celebrate N.C.'s Indian history

CHAPEL HILL -- Native American musicians will perform traditional Tuscarora music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Oct. 24 in anticipation of Native American Heritage Month in November.

Willie Lowery, a Lumbee guitarist, and Pura Fé Locklear, a Tuscarora singer, will bring these styles together in songs that celebrate North Carolina’s Indian history. Accompanying Lowery and Locklear will be David Locklear and Mark Deese of the Kau-ten-oh Juniors, a Tuscarora drum group. All are from Roberson County.

The musicians will discuss the origins and meanings of their songs and encourage audience participation. Styles they play will include what they call Indian blues.

The free public concert will be from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence, located in the Graham Memorial Building near the Morehead Planetarium. Planned for the terrace on the building's east side, the concert will be part of the center's Thursdays on the Terrace series. A schedule and information are available at www.unc.edu/depts/jcue.

"The purpose of bringing these musicians to campus is to raise awareness of the vivid history and experience of North Carolina’s first people in a fashion that our audience will find entertaining and completely new," said Malinda Maynor, a doctoral candidate in history at UNC and a specialist in Native American culture.

Native American Heritage Month is customarily proclaimed nationwide each year by the president for the month of November. The concert at Carolina will be sponsored by a Johnston Center Intellectual Life Grant and by the Center for the Study of the American South. For more information, call 966-5110.

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Contact: Dr. Randi Davenport, (919) 843-7765