We’re spoiled for options for live music around St. Louis. This weekend offers a chance at something truly exceptional, even by our elevated standards. The women of Ulali are performing their program, “Honoring our People,” at Collinsville High School on Saturday, March 24 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
The all-female Native American group highlights Native American struggles and accomplishments, sung a cappella or nearly so. Their bluesy harmonies lend beautifully to both traditionally influenced and contemporary music.
Their songs feature driving and haunting vocals, made up of forms such as Southeast United States choral singing and pre-Columbian music. The women offer minimal accompaniment for their voices, using drumming, rattling, and stomping.
Ulali has been evolving since its inception in 1987. It was first known as Pura Fé after one of the members. For a time, it was made up of three women and three men and then was a female duo before settling into its current all-woman lineup.
They’ve shared stages with Sting, the B-52’s, Bonnie Raitt and the Neville Brothers, among plenty more. They played at Woodstock ’94 and the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, as well as the Smithsonian Folkways 50th Anniversary Gala at Carnegie Hall in 1997. The group was on the Indigo Girls 1997 record Shaming the Sun and opened for their tour in support of the record.
Saturday’s performance is presented by the Cahokia Mounds Museum Society.
Cahokia Mounds is a prehistoric site, but many contemporary tribes have ancestry that tracks to the Mississippian peoples that populated the site. People seeking information on Native American culture often connect though the site.
“A lot of people come to us,” says Lori Belknap, executive director of the Cahokia Mounds Museum Society. “There’s no reservation or anything in the state of Illinois. There’s not a resource. We try to fit that bill by providing these types of contemporary Native American events.”
The society hosts education days, market days, and the Chickasaw Nation Dance Troupe, a two-day event in October featuring shell shaking, stomp dancing and storytelling, as well as stickball games, flute music, drumming, Chickasaw regalia, storytelling and art.
Most of the society’s events are free, and your admission to the Ulali event goes to support the rest of the year’s programming.
Tickets are $20, $18 for members. Collinsville High School Auditorium. 2201 South Morrison, Collinsville, IL.
