Library Of Congress, and Sponsoring Body American Folklife Center. Sihasin. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, July 8, 2020. Video. https://www.loc.gov/item/2024696957/.
Listening to/viewing the Sihasin performance offers audiences a unique opportunity to learn about Indigenous music, culture, and social commentary that spans historical and contemporary contexts. The musicians’ relationship as siblings adds a familial element to the performance, too. Around the nine minute mark, Jeneda and Clayson discuss incorporating their traditional Indigenous music with their contemporary compositions. The duo’s banter and explanations of their songs’ historical, cultural, social, and personal connections provides viewers/listeners with insightful framing for indigenous voices, especially those of the twenty-first century.
According to the Library of Congress website, this video is “[a] performance by Sihasin, the musical duo of siblings Jeneda and Clayson Benally, award-winning musicians from the Diné Navajo Nation in Northern Arizona” (https://www.loc.gov/item/2024696957/). The songs in this performance reflect the duo’s familial, cultural, and personal messages about hope, health, equality, environmental justice, and respect, particularly within the Indigenous experience.
This is a recorded musical performance of two musicians from the Diné Navajo Nation. Their musical performance was recorded during July of 2020, when a majority of the world was sheltering at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the duo’s performance for the Homegrown concert series sponsored by the Library of Congress. Sihasin’s songs provide listeners with important messages, histories, and stories from the Diné perspective.
- What does “Sihasin” mean, and what does the name suggest to listeners/viewers about the musicians’ culture and beliefs?
- How does the Sihasin performance space impact the listener’s/viewer’s understanding of the musicians’ songs and messages?
- How does listening to/viewing Sihasin’s performance help audiences better understand elements of the Diné culture, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic?
- In what ways do Sihasin’s songs connect to concepts of identity and social/political/cultural resistance?
New York State Next Generation Standards
Craft and Structure: 9-10R6: Analyze how authors employ point of view, perspective, and purpose to shape explicit and implicit messages (e.g., examine rhetorical strategies, literary elements and devices). (RI&RL)
- Viewers can watch the entire performance or selections therein to determine the musicians’ explicit and implicit messages in their lyrical content and in their conversations between the songs in their set.
Key Ideas and Details: 11-12R3: In literary texts, analyze the impact of author’s choices. (RL) In informational texts, analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop. (RI)
- Viewers can watch the set in its entirety and chart main themes and ideas as they develop in the performance.
- This primary source would pair well with a reading of Jake Skeets’ poem, "Learning about Treaties in School." Jake Skeets is a Diné poet from New Mexico, and his poetry shares similar historical and cultural roots and themes found in Sihasin’s music.
- Skeets, Jake. n.d. “Learning About Treaties in School,” Poem. Poetry Foundation. Accessed January 2, 2025. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/158150/learning-about-treaties-in-school.
- US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo performed a full musical set called the Shelter in Place Sessions, and within that set, one of her songs is a Land Acknowledgement song, which echoes similar cultural, historical, and environmental themes that Sihasin’s songs also discuss.
- Harjo, Joy. 2021. “Land Acknowledgement Song,” Musical performance by U.S. poet laureate, Joy Harjo. Youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKhjI17xcF0.
The Sihasin performance may receive some pushback because the duo includes songs and discussions of the painful, violent history of inequality and marginalization that Indigenous communities have faced and, in some instances, continue to face across the United States. Some may find these topics uncomfortable to discuss due to their violent and discriminatory nature.
- The Library of Congress has a recorded interview with Jeneda and Clayson Benally where they discuss their Indigenous identities, their familial connections, and the Indigenous roots and elements of their music.
- Library Of Congress, and Sponsoring Body American Folklife Center. Conversation with Jeneda & Clayson Benally. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, -01-07, 2021. Video. https://www.loc.gov/item/2024697379/.
- The Library of Congress has a video, Jones Benally Family Dancers: Navajo Traditional Dance, that features Indigenous cultural music and dance in a more traditional presentation.
- Library Of Congress, and Sponsoring Body American Folklife Center. Jones Benally Family Dancers: Navajo Traditional Dance. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, September 10, 2019. Video. https://www.loc.gov/item/2024696647/.
- Indigenous Music and Arts Inc. is a nonprofit group that is dedicated to showcasing, promoting, and supporting indigenous representation through music across the world. This is a great source for introducing students to more indigenous voices and musicians within and beyond the United States.
- MusiCounts is a teaching resource that is designed to help educators bring more indigenous language music into their classrooms. It can provide a next step or a supplemental element to Sihasin performance.