Photo Credit Courtesy of Master Class
Photo Credit Courtesy of Master Class

JOY HARJO has been performing music with her poetry since the early 1990's when she founded the reggae-tribal-jazz-rock band, Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice.

Joy Harjo's most recent album, I Pray for My Enemies, digs deep into the indigenous red earth and the shared languages of music to sing, speak and play a stunningly original musical meditation that seeks healing for a troubled world.

Since her first album, a spoken word classic Letter From the End of the Twentieth Century (2003) and her 1998 solo album Native Joy for Real, she has received numerous awards and recognitions for her music, including from the First Americans in the Arts, First Native American Music Awards, American Indian Film Festival, and New Mexico Music Awards. Harjo won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the Year for her 2008 album Winding Through the Milky Way.

Harjo performs with her saxophone and flutes, solo and with pulled-together players she often calls the Arrow Dynamics Band. She has performed with guitarist Larry Mitchell, bass player Rene Camacho, Oliver Lake’s band, bass player Michael Davis from MC5, Keith Stoutenberg, and many others. She has performed in Europe, South America, India, and Africa, as well as for a range of North American stages, including the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, the Cultural Olympiad at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, Def Poetry Jam, the International Poetry Festival in Medellin, Colombia, and the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington D.C.

Performances

Joy Harjo also performs her one-woman show, Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light, which premiered at the Wells Fargo Theater in Los Angeles in 2009 with recent performances at the Public Theater in NYC and La Jolla Playhouse as part of the Native Voices at the Autry.


Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light
A Play by Joy Harjo and a Circle of Responses

Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light paperback

Joy Harjo's play Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light is the centerpiece of this collection that includes essays and interviews concerning the roots and the reaches of contemporary Native Theater. Harjo blends storytelling, music, movement, and poetic language in Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light—a healing ceremony that chronicles the challenges young protagonist Redbird faces on her path to healing and self-determination.

Learn More

Inaugural Reading as U.S. Poet Laureate

Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light

Photos

Photo by Shawn Miller
Photo by Shawn Miller
Performing at Indigenous Ways Photo Credit Kerry Kehoe 2
Performing at Indigenous Ways Photo Credit Kerry Kehoe 2
Jason S Ordaz Photography
Jason S Ordaz Photography
Shawn Miller LOC Closing
Shawn Miller LOC Closing
Performing at Indigenous Ways Photo Credit Kerry Kehoe 1
Performing at Indigenous Ways Photo Credit Kerry Kehoe 1
Joy Harjo Performing
Joy Harjo Performing
Performing at Cains Photo Credit Adam Koloff 2
Performing at Cains Photo Credit Adam Koloff 2
Performing at Indigenous Way Photo Credit Kerry Kehoe 3
Performing at Indigenous Way Photo Credit Kerry Kehoe 3
Photo Credit Courtesy of Master Class
Photo Credit Courtesy of Master Class
Performing at Cains Photo Credit Adam Koloff 1
Performing at Cains Photo Credit Adam Koloff 1