`Pepper's Pow Wow' -- In A Merging Of Cultures, A Native Filmmaker Preserves A Jazz Legacy

Osawa's `Pow Wow'

"Pepper's Pow Wow" will be shown at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow in the University of Washington's Kane Hall, Roethke Auditorium, followed by "Hand of History." Sandra Osawa will introduce her film and answer viewers' questions. For more information, call 543-2281.

"Here's what I'm drawn to," says Sandy Sunrising Osawa. "I'm interested in people who suggest ways of walking in two worlds. People who turn that dilemma into a strength. Because if two cultures feed into who you are, and you can't do that, your only option is to lose one of those cultures."

When Osawa met Jim Pepper, she knew she had found one of those people. Pepper was a tenor saxophone player, son of an Oklahoma Cree and a Kaw; Osawa is a member of Washington state's Makah tribe and an independent filmmaker. They first met in Spokane, at 1984's National Congress of American Indians. Osawa had meant to film a very different musician, but Pepper's voice and viewpoint transfixed her.

She spent the next 10 years recording his life, fascinated by a story that became her film, "Pepper's Pow Wow." In it lurks a slice of untold American history, stitched together by a wonderful range of voices. Through them, we learn how Jim Pepper took his heritage into a parallel world: jazz.

To Osawa, this was a "perfect" story. It explored the meeting of two musical cultures, Native American and Afro-American. And the music was, for her, a vibrant metaphor: "Jim drew impetus and passion from both cultures, and he used music to make sense of life."

It was something she certainly could relate to. Osawa launched Washington's first Indian Head Start Program. And, through summer classes for kids and teens, she has helped save Makah songs since the '60s. She also brought Makah elders back into schools - just as Pepper studied with his grandfather.

Her first film of Pepper was a five-minute chat, captured at that 1984 congress. But as she began to learn his saga, she found it crossed continents as well as barriers. From Vienna, Austria, to Portland, Ore. (where his mother still resides), she recorded Pepper up until 1992 - the year he died, unexpectedly, of cancer.

"Pepper's Pow Wow" introduces Jim's tight-knit family and the artist's Oklahoma tribal roots. But it focuses on what he made from them, from his '60s fusion ensemble The Free Spirits to his crossover hit, "Witchi Tai To."

Hard-core jazz enthusiasts will love this history, spiced with oral reminiscences and aural rarities (we see Pepper duet with Keith Jarrett and play with the likes of Mal Waldron and Don Cherry). Present, too, is the genesis of "Witchi Tai To," learned as a peyote chant from his grandparent. Many viewers will be surprised to recognize the tune.

Still, this is no mere "jazz documentary." It begins with bright film of a Kaw pow wow, overlaid with the Pepper composition "Caddo Revival." Over footage of men executing a gourd dance, we hear Pepper outline his inheritance. "The music Native Americans have been singing for centuries comes directly from the ground, from the earth, from the four directions. And that music is a healing force."

Filmmaker's achievement

One of Osawa's achievements is to show how Pepper kept his work grounded. We see him learning from his family and elders, teaching, clowning around - and traveling to West Africa. "Yes!" declaims Cherry at Pepper's memorial, "Jim Pepper went to Africa, and he took his own traditions!"

"Pepper's Pow Wow" uses a broad spectrum of footage and a wide range of interviewees. There are not just jazz greats, but Indian parents; not just native dancers, but poets. Even in terms of editing, the film is ambitious, choosing to reflect a native time-frame. At this moderate yet engrossing pace, its images dissolve one into another. The film embodies the film of its subject view: that all life is part of one continuum.

This, says Osawa, is what happens when a culture is allowed to shape its stories. She knows those words "first Native American" well. Osawa was the first Native American independent to produce commercial TV. In 1975, her 10-part NBC series on the first Americans won an Outstanding Producer Award. Twenty years later, Osawa's "Lighting the Fire" was the first Indian-produced project aired on the PBS series "P.O.V."

Also a screenwriter

Osawa has a slew of other credentials, such as her acclaimed documentary, "In the Heart of Big Mountain." She has also made 40 nonbroadcast videos, many aimed at documenting native culture. She taught screenwriting at The Evergreen State College and is one of the few Native Americans to belong to the Writers' Guild of America.

She agrees that "Pepper's Pow Wow" was made to "different" standards.

"These are production choices I evolved from `Big Mountain.' So the pace is different, and yet it's packed. To me, those dissolves indicate a smoothness, they produce a certain kind of rhythm. I want you to enter a different world."

Yet the viewer must be willing to surrender. And, Osawa notes, there is little to prepare them. "Lots of rich stuff has been written on black communities, on their different use of pace and repetition. But we have very few of those materials. We did look for books, even magazine stuff. But in the end we knew we had to break some ground.

"And it was exciting, adding pieces to that puzzle. Now we're getting a lot of positive feedback. Not just from musicians and hard-core jazz fans, but from musicologists and academics."

At last November's annual American Indian Film Festival, "Pepper's Pow Wow" won best documentary feature; in January, it was featured at the Sundance Festival. This week it's part of the series "Worlds in Edgewise: The Pacific Onscreen," sponsored by the Henry Art Gallery.

Curator Tamara Moats has paired "Pepper's Pow Wow" with the film "Hand of History." "Hand" was made by filmmaker Loretta Todd, a Canadian with four bloodlines (Cree, Metis, Iroquois and Scots). It contrasts four First Nation artists, from a basketmaker to a conceptualist.

Says Moats, "Both these films deal with maintaining voices, and the ways traditions are kept alive. And `Pepper's Pow Wow' is amazing for its depth. Sandy started on it such a long time back. Then, when Jim died, she kept his story from vanishing."

As a native filmmaker, Osawa is unique. She runs her own Seattle company, Upstream Productions. She says she now sees more native filmmakers, but hopes their path will be easier.

"Our generation had to struggle so much. Even now, when Indians are becoming commercially `popular,' we're still outside, still knocking at the door. We don't want a part in telling our histories; we are central to the truths of them."