Wild Steps is a Flagstaff 501(c)(3) that researches, revives and recreates the music and dance traditions of Arizona and the Southwest, then makes them available to everybody through community programs at nursing homes, schools, community centers, libraries and more, along with a concert series. But to hear founder Kate Rose, Ph.D., talk about it, the work grew out of a question nobody else seemed to be asking.
“Southwest tradition is a real melting pot of cultures. So my background is in Irish fiddling,” she said. “I lived in Ireland a few years and learned it in the traditional way, and then my guitarist Armand Ramirez comes from a vast musical background where he’s played everything from flamenco to gypsy jazz.
“But a few years ago, we realized that no one was really interested in the traditional music of Arizona itself. Like, what were people playing in the old days, what kind of dances were they doing?”
So the two started digging through archives and old recordings and talking with Native American culture bearers, including Gertie Lopez on the Tohono O’odham Nation, whom they collaborate with. They study the traditions different cultures brought to the region, especially where those traditions fused, like Celtic and Hispanic music coming together into a sound all its own.
“A lot of Irish people came over after the Irish famine” of 1845 to 1852, “and they fought in the Civil War,” Rose said. “Then a lot of them moved west and became cowboys and settled here, including in Arizona. And so they always brought their music and their stories and dances everywhere.”
Further south, Hugo O’Conor [1732-1779], a Dublin-born officer in the Spanish Army who had been appointed governor of Texas by Spanish Viceroy Carlos Francisco de Croix of New Spain in 1767, founded Presidio of San Ignacio de Túbac in 1775. The environs around the fort grew into the city of Tucson.
“So there’s a long history and a varied history,” Rose said. “There’s Nellie Cashman, [in] the 1800s, who was a business woman who had hotels,” from the Russ House in Tombstone before trekking north to the Yukon in 1898 during the Klondike Gold Rush. “There are poets who left us works which combines the Irish forms and the landscapes of Arizona. It’s an under-researched topic that we like to draw into our performances a lot.”
Rose holds a doctorate in comparative literature, so she said she is always drawing from literary sources such as “Ned White: Arizona’s ‘Bard of Brewery Gulch.'”
“So we often recite some of his poetry in connection with the landscapes and history of Arizona,” Rose said. “And then we found some books of folk tales of the Southwest from different traditions, so we do musical storytelling. So we tell a bit of a folk tale and we play music that goes with the tale to just bring it to life. We’re doing a few of those shows at Mary Fisher [Theatre], and then also story times in the park in Sedona, based on the stories we found.”
Wild Steps Performances
- Sunday, Nov. 1, 4 to 6 p.m.: Mary D. Fisher Theatre, Sedona. “Día de los Muertos & Samhain: Music Across the Veil,” with Arvel Bird, Kate Rose and Armand Ramirez.
- Sunday, Nov. 8, 4 to 6 p.m.: Mary D. Fisher Theatre, Sedona. “Fiddle Tales: Stories Between Worlds,” with Rose and Ramirez.
- Wednesday, Nov. 18, 10 a.m.: Storytime in the Park, Sedona. “Fiddle Tales: Stories You Can Step Into.”
- Wednesday, Dec. 16, 10 a.m.: Storytime in the Park, Sedona. “Fiddle Tales: Stories You Can Step Into.”
- Sunday, Dec. 20, 4 to 6 p.m.: Mary D. Fisher Theatre, Sedona. “The Longest Night: Music at the Turning Year,” with Bird, Rose and Ramirez.
