By: Joseph Rios
Raven Chacon has made history for his piece, Voiceless Mass, by becoming the first Indigenous composer to win a Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Voiceless Mass premiered near Thanksgiving last year at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee. The piece is 16 minutes long and features organs, strings, winds, percussion, and sine tone. The Pulitzer Prizes called Voiceless Mass a “mesmerizing, original work for organ and ensembles that evokes the weight of history in a church setting, a concentrated and powerful musical expression with a haunting visceral impact.”
Ahead of the performance of the piece, Chacon participated in a week-long residency in Milwaukee where he rehearsed with the ensemble, led education events for local students, and spoke in a pre-concert talk, according to Present Music — a group that helped fund the performance. Other funders include the Wisconsin Conference of the United Church of Christ and Plymouth Church UCC.
In his award nomination, Chacon said that as an Indigenous artist, he made an exception to present his work on Thanksgiving.
“This work considers the spaces in which we gather, the history of access of these spaces, and the land upon which these buildings sit. Though ‘mass’ is referenced in the title, the piece contains no audible singing voices, instead using the openness of the large space to intone the constricted intervals of the wind and string instruments,” Chacon wrote in his entry nomination to the Pulitzer Prizes. “In exploiting the architecture of the cathedral, Voiceless Mass considers the futility of giving voice to the voiceless, when ceding space is never an option for those in power.”
Chacon, a multi-disciplinary artist and composer based in Albuquerque, is a Diné artist and a composer, visual artist and sole performer. He is from the Navajo Nation and attended the California Institute of the Arts.
Throughout his 20-plus year long career, Chacon has appeared on more than 80 releases through numerous labels on a national and international scale. He has exhibited, performed or had works performed at San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Borealis Festival, SITE Santa Fe, The Kennedy Center, and other places.
While his professional resume is heavy, Chacon has found time to give back to the community by mentoring high school Native composers in the writing of new string quartets through the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project — a music composition immersion program. The program involves Native American composers who tutor Native students on the Navajo, Hopi and Salt River Pima-Maricopa Reservations.
Other accolades and awards Chacon has received throughout his career include the Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition, the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award, and more.
Chacon’s artworks are stored in various museums across the country like the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and National Museum of the American Indian, Los Angles County Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute, the University of New Mexico Art Museum, and other private collections, according to his website.
