Miami-based architect, composer, and Indigenous flutist Timothy Archambault is dedicated to both preserving and expanding the suppressed musical traditions of his Kichesipirini Algonquin and Métis ancestors. Since the 1990s, he has developed a repertoire of early twentieth-century Indigenous music, contemporary music by Indigenous composers, and Canadian Algonquin flute songs. Indigenous flutes, carved from wood or other materials native to a tribe’s territory, are traditionally employed to mimic the sounds of nature or send signals during times of conflict. Archambault brings these instruments into the contexts of classical performance, noise, and new music, engaging in what he calls “cultural retrieval.” By returning to native methods and materials he is able to bypass the colonial influence which grafted fundamentally incompatible Western systems onto Indigenous musics.
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Archambault unpacks the divination technique inspiring him in advance of his April 6 performance at Blank Forms.