Julia Keefe Interview
The Podcast, Video and Show Notes are here! Transcript is below.
Julia Keefe:
Mildred Bailey has been my north star as a jazz vocalist since I was a teenager when I stumbled across her name. That was the first time I saw myself as a Native American woman reflected in the music that I loved so much. But Mildred Bailey, she was a member of the Coeur d'Alene tribe. She grew up in Spokane, Washington. She was childhood friends with Bing Crosby and helped him get his start. She was the first woman to be hired as a full-time big band female jazz vocalist with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in 1929.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you’re listening to Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman, which I hope inspires you through the personal stories of a fascinating diversity of musical guests.Julia Keefe (Nez Perce) is an internationally acclaimed Native American jazz vocalist, actor, activist, and educator currently based in New York City. You’ll hear how her Indigenous Big Band project started, the history behind jazz in Native American communities and inspiration from Delbert Anderson to Jim Pepper. A special influence in her life has been Mildred Bailey and you’ll be hearing some clips from Julia’s Mildred Bailey Project album throughout this podcast; the track names are in the timestamps. Mildred was a very important figure in jazz and Julia is also working on a film about her life and career. Julia spoke about some of the sexual harassment she has experienced and how she was affected by the experience of sexual assault by a professor when she was in graduate school. She opened up about how she got through that time with the support of her vocal teacher Jo Lawry . In the shadow of this challenging time, Julia shared some fascinating specifics into how her voice teachers Jo, Theo Bleckmann and also Kate McGarry helped push her artistic and expressive boundaries, and later what a transformative experience it was to be mentored by Esperanza Spalding. Julia’s identity as an Indigenous jazz musician shapes her creative life in so many affirming and inspirational ways; I’m so happy to share this meaningful conversation with you. You can watch the video on my YouTube or listen to the podcast, and I’ve also linked the transcript.It’s a joy to bring these inspiring episodes to you, and I do all the many jobs of research, production and publicity. Have a look at the show notes of this episode on my website, where you’ll find all the links, including different ways to support this podcast, and other episodes you’ll enjoy!
Hey, Julia, thanks so much for joining me here today.
Julia Keefe:
Oh, thank you so much for having me.
Leah Roseman:
I found out about you through Chuck Copenace because he played with your Indigenous Big Band and I've been following you since then. So I'm glad we can make that work.
Julia Keefe:
Oh yeah. I'm so glad. Chuck is one of my favorite people and I love having him in the band. He's a wonderful musician and human, just such a good, compassionate, giving musician.
Leah Roseman:
Well, we're going to be talking about all kinds of creative strands and your life in music and performing arts, but maybe we should start with the Indigenous Big Band because it's such a special project.
Julia Keefe:
Yeah. I formed the Indigenous Big Band in May of 2022. That was our premier performance. It all sort of came about because I became connected to Indigenous jazz trumpeter, Delbert Anderson. And we connected online during COVID and he was working on a separate project. And what was supposed to be a sort of half hour getting to know you phone call turned into this three hour phone call of us just really geeking out on jazz. It was the first time I had connected with an indigenous jazz contemporary. And so we had just such a beautiful conversation and we started talking about big bands and the history of big bands in tribal communities and indigenous jazz musicians who rose to prominence in the swing era and sort of offhandedly talked about, "Oh man, wouldn't it be cool if we had an all- native big band? Wouldn't that be cool?
Yeah, that'd be so hip. Well, if you form one, be sure to hire me. No, you'd be sure to hire me. " After that, it was sort of like, "Okay, cool, great." But then the opportunity came up to submit a grant application for the new at that time, South Arts Jazz Road's Creative Jazz Residency. So that was sort of the inaugural year of that funding opportunity as a result of COVID. They couldn't fund touring groups during that time, so they created this larger grant opportunity. And Delbert was submitting for a separate project of his, and I was sort of thinking like, "Oh, what should I submit? What should I do? " And Delbert called me and said, "You should submit an application for the big band idea that we had." And so he's a co-founder of the band. I am so honored that he really said, "Julia, go for it.You should be the one to do this. You have this passion and this knowledge of the historical precedent for Indigenous big bands." And so I put together a behemoth of a grant proposal and I was like, "I promise this is not niche. Well, it's niche, but it's not without precedent. And here's the history and here's why it's important. And here are the Indigenous jazz musicians that I've connected to who will be part of the big band." And I was incredibly surprised when I was awarded the full funding for this big band and then came about the task of finding jazz musicians.
Once I got the funding, I was like, "Oh my gosh, did I just make a promise, like a legal promise to this major funder that I can't deliver on? " Because it was really like I knew Delbert, I knew Mali Obomsawin, and that was it. Those were the indigenous jazz musicians that I knew. And so I did a big call for artists on social media and reaching out to universities and colleges with Native American student unions. And the feedback from that media push was enormous. We had musicians from all over the US and Canada reaching out to us, some as young as 14, some as old as in their 90s, saying, that with the man who was in his 90s, he said, "Listen, I'm not going to make the hit and I'm not even saying that my chops are up to speed, but I just wanted to reach out and say, I'm incredibly excited about this and really proud of what you guys are doing.Keep it up. Please let me know how I can support." And the 14-year-old in rural Oklahoma saying, "I thought I was the only Native who liked jazz." And so we had this beautiful feedback, lots of folks who were interested and folks who were available, folks who weren't available, people were submitting music and audition tapes and things like that. And so through that, I was able to sort of put together this group of 16 musicians to perform at the Washington Center for Performing Arts in Olympia, Washington in May of 2022. And it was such a beautiful experience because we got four days of intense rehearsal. We had all these all new jazz arrangements that I commissioned from Delbert's music and Mali's music and highlighting Mildred Bailey and Jim Pepper or some folks from jazz history who rose to prominence. And so we had this really beautiful sort of overview of Indigenous jazz history up into the present.
And it was a really intense rehearsal process, but we had such a wonderful time, all of us together and the performance went so well. They sounded so great that afterwards, everybody in the band was like, "We're doing this again. This wasn't just a one-off?" We had sort of unanimous buy-in on this dream. And since then, we've been able to perform at the Kennedy Center for Mary Lou Williams Jazz Fest. We've performed up in Alaska for rural communities and rural Alaskan Native Villages. We had an amazing tour through California and into Colorado. We performed at Joe's Pub and Birdland. It's been a wonderful ride so far. And we're releasing our first studio album in May of 2026. So yeah, we're just moving right along. It's been really beautiful and I'm honored to be a part of it and to be at the helm as it were of this Indigenous jazz ship.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So the album's going to be released in a few months, but I can edit in a clip of some of your live performances and link the YouTube video. Yeah?
Julia Keefe:
Perfect.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Just so people can get a taste. (Music: clip of Jim Pepper’s “Water” with video linked in show notes )
So we're going to get into Mildred Bailey, but on that album, it's not the same band.
Julia Keefe:
No. Yeah, it's not the same band. The Mildred Bailey Project was a separate band. So the Mildred Bailey Project was a separate project, separate band. I have been working on the Mildred Bailey Project since I was probably about 15 myself. I was able to put together an octet, a nonet if you include myself on vocals, for Jazz Appreciation Month in 2009, I believe that was the date, if I'm remembering myself correctly. But that was the first time the National Museum of the American Indian had participated in Jazz Appreciation Month. And so we were able to put together this show highlighting some of the greatest hits of Mildred Bailey with this sort of mini big band sound right there at the Smithsonian in 2009. And since then, I've done it in different configurations as a quartet, the octet, and obviously I've had the Indigenous big band perform some of Mildred Bailey's music as well, but the Mildred Brailey Project has very much been a passion project of mine from the beginning of my career.
And it was through a grant through Chamber Music America that I was finally able to get my little mini big band into the studio and sort of get it in the can.(Music: clip “Thanks for Memory" track 8 )
Finally, and that released earlier this year. It was funny, I had some distribution issues. It was supposed to release the year prior, but I wasn't able to get the rights to Rockin' Chair.
Leah Roseman:
Oh, okay.
Julia Keefe:
And so it was on hold. The entire release was pulled the night before it was supposed to go.
Leah Roseman:
How terrible.
Julia Keefe:
Digital. I know. And I can't release a Mildred Bailey album without Rockin' Chair. It's her signature piece. She was known as the Rockin' Chair Lady. And so I had to just sort of pull it down and put it on hold. And I was like, "Okay, all right, I'll focus on this later," because the big band was taking off and I was like, "Okay, I'll return to the Mildred Bailey project once I get a little bit more space in my brain to focus in on it. " And then right after the Big Band performed at Birdland in January of this year, 2025, then I got this alert from DistroKid that was like, "The Mildred Bailey Project is live."
Leah Roseman:
Oh, wow.
Julia Keefe:
"What?" And so I went in and I looked and I guess they had kept trying to get the rights to Rockin' Chair. And so then it was just sort of released in its entirety.
Leah Roseman:
So they dealt with that for you?
Julia Keefe:
They dealt with that for me somehow. And I didn't have any warning and one of my buddies was like, "Well, pull it down again and rerelease it on your own timeframe and do a proper launch." And there's some wisdom to that I'm finding now that I'm working on the Indigenous Big Band album release and the strategy of a release, I had no idea. But at that time, it was what, February 2025, the big band was getting on tour. We were doing three or four dates every month and because my bandwidth was kind of stretched then, I was like, "You know what? It's fine. It's out there. It's like done is better than perfect and I'm just glad it's out there." Now that I have a little bit more bandwidth, I want to have a physical distribution. I need to get it remastered for vinyl. I think it would live really well on vinyl. But yeah, as soon as it was out, I was like, "You know what?Maybe this is the universe just sort of working itself out. It's out. It's fine. "I'll focus on the big band album release and be a little bit more strategic and have a bigger team attached because it really has just been me and my laptop
Leah Roseman:
doing all of this.
So we should back up because not everyone knows who Mildred Bailey is going back almost a hundred years.
Julia Keefe:
Yes.
Leah Roseman:
Historic figure.
Julia Keefe:
Mildred Bailey has been my north star as a jazz vocalist since I was a teenager when I stumbled across her name, that was the first time I saw myself as a Native American woman reflected in the music that I loved so much. But Mildred Bailey, she was a member of the Coeur d'Alene tribe. She grew up in Spokane, Washington. She was childhood friends with Bing Crosby and helped him get his start. And she was the first woman to be hired as a full-time big band female jazz vocalist with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in 1929. And when you think about the vocalists who followed her in that sort of exclusivity of being like, "Okay, I am exclusively, Ella Fitzgerald exclusively with the Chick Webb orchestra." You think about all of these vocalists and the careers that they built, and it really was because Mildred Bailey was able to kick down that door and secure that full-time gig to be exclusively with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra.
And so she has been a very prolific figure in the evolution of jazz. She was sort of the hip lady that everybody went to and everybody was sort of competing against her as a vocalist. And she was described as a jazz musician's singer, which of course as a vocalist, I'm always like, well, she was also a musician, but we'll get into semantics later. But she was an instrumentalist's vocalist. They liked the way that she was phrasing things. She was re-imagining and improvising with melodies. And at a time when you had your blues singers who were executing melodies in that sort of bigger, brassier way, and then you had your sort of Hollywood canary singers who were these high little voices that were very true to the rhythms written on the page. And here's Mildred Bailey who had a soprano voice with a fast vibrato who was reinterpreting the rhythms and reinterpreting the melody and really driving home the meaning of the words while also being very musically intentional with the execution of those rhythms and conversational with the execution of those rhythms.
So Mildred Bailey has just, she's been a rockstar for me in my life since I was 15, but in the sort of chapters of jazz history, she's largely been forgotten. She was widely credited as a white vocalist. I remember when I was studying at University of Miami and taking our Evolution of Jazz history course, I forget which book it was, which history book it was, but you turn to sort of jazz vocalists of the era and Mildred Bailey was listed first and Mildred Bailey was a white jazz vocalist from Spokane, Washington and just being like, no, yes, her maiden name was Rinker and her dad, her father was white, but her mother was Coeur d'Alene. And so that sort of either unknowing of her Indigenous ancestry or just sort of overlooking her Indigenous legacy, her Indigenous identity, I don't know, that was sort of par for the course at that time.
And so being able to really bring that to the surface and what I do as a mixed race Native woman, I'm Irish and Nez Perce, I don't know, there was sort of a parallel track with Mildred Bailey that I couldn't help but notice as a mixed race Native woman who also grew up in Spokane and fell in love with jazz at an early age.
Leah Roseman:
We're going to get into that, but I have to say it's such a beautiful album and your singing is just gorgeous. Love your voice.
Julia Keefe:
Thank you. Thank you so much. Really appreciate that.
Leah Roseman:
And this album is bookended by Rockin' Chair, right?
Julia Keefe:
Yes. Yeah. So the beginning of the Mildred Bailey Project album starts with the way that Mildred Bailey would start her radio shows.(Music: clip of track 1 Rockin' Chair opener) You would have the announcer come on and now the Rockin' Chair Lady Mildred Bailey and the orchestra would (singing). They would play this really lush intro. And so I had that transcribed when I was 19. I was not up to snuff on my music theory or transcription skills at that time. So I had that transcribed and reduced for the four horns and Piano Bass Drums Guitar. And so that's how we kicked off the album, was sort of this homage to how she would kick off her radio shows. And then at the end of the album, I sing Rockin' Chair on every gig. I love that tune so much. Hoagy Carmichael was such a beautiful composer.
So I wanted to end the album with my rendition of Rockin' Chair. One of her brothers, one of Mildred Bailey's brothers said, Mildred Bailey would never overexert her voice. She said she didn't need to sing loud to get the point across. I love singing loud. I just really enjoy it when my voice is able to sort of get to that place. And in my sort of interpretation of the song, I feel like it warrants it. So being able to pay homage to Mildred Bailey by doing this song, but also doing it in the way that I love to sing it, I felt like that was a nice way to sort of end the album. (Music: clip of track 9 Rockin' Chair)
Leah Roseman:
Do you want to talk about the film, the ongoing project, the story of Mildred Bailey with Lily Gladstone?
Julia Keefe:
Yes, yes. The film adaptation of Mildred Bailey's life has very much been part of this project from the beginning. I remember when the state of Idaho declared Mildred Bailey Day on her birthday and had it read into sort of the state record that Mildred Bailey was a prolific figure and we celebrated it and I got the declaration framed and I have the declaration from the state of Idaho. The actor, Gary Farmer, Indigenous actor, Gary Farmer, reached out to my mom and said, "Let's make a movie." And that was back in 2012. And so we have been talking about this for a very, very, very long time.
And Lily has been a dear friend since about 2013, 2014. We worked together at a Native youth theater camp out in Seattle through the organization called Red Eagle Soaring. And I remember talking to her back then because I thought she really looks like Mildred and she has this beautiful personality. She's such a giving actor and a giving person with a wonderful, wild and surprising sense of humor that I just thought, "Man, she would be such a lovely actor to portray Mildred Bailey." And so we talked about it then as well. And of course, over the years, things come and go, projects come to the front of mind and to the back of mind. I almost called her Mildred. Lily was doing her film work in certain women and really building up her profile as an independent, as an indie film actor. And then when Lily was cast in Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon, it was around after she wrapped filming that she reached out and said, "Now might be the time for Mildred" because she has this star power behind her. And so we got Gary Farmer back involved and were working with some other writers.
And of course, at this moment, Lily is very much in actor mode. And so it really has come onto me to sort of usher this project forward. And so I've been working very closely with Gary Farmer and some other writers who are far more experienced in screenwriting than I am, but we have our little team and we're moving this project forward and we want to keep it independent. I've learned so much about the film industry in this exercise because once you sell or once you bring on a big producer like your Netflix or your Apple or your Paramount or what have you, they could shelve it. They could very easily shelve it. We're seeing a lot of musical bio opics coming out and a lot of folks are saying, "What else is there to say with a biopic about a musician? They're all the same.Okay, they went through this hardship and they did this and blah, blah, blah, and now they end up on top and then they have a fall from grace." I mean, I guess maybe there is something formulaic about our lives as musicians, but I do think that Mildred Bailey deserves her time in the sun and she deserves her flowers.
And so I'm trying to keep it independent in order to ensure that her story is told and told accurately. She had a great personality in that she had a fiery temper and a wonderful sense of humor, but she was a woman. She was a person. She was flawed. I don't want to sugarcoat it for the sake of people's perceptions of her, but I also don't want her story to end up in the hands of someone who has zero sympathy for her as a woman in the jazz industry in the 30s and 40s. I remember talking to a historian who was very focused on her story and they said, "Oh, well, Mildred Bailey was a glutton. She couldn't stop eating. She just couldn't stop eating." It was like, a glutton, that's not exactly a scientific term. It's very judgmental. Why do you think that you are the person who should be telling her story when you have zero sympathy for her and you don't see her humanity, you don't have that cultural knowledge of that disconnection from culture and the lasting impact that has on Indigenous people because of Indian boarding schools, because of colonization of these tribal lands.
I mean, it was illegal for American Indians, for Native Americans to practice their spirituality up until 1978.That was when we were able to actually practice our religions and our cultural practices openly. And so without that understanding, I feel that her story would be told without love and care.
Talking to the folks who are my collaborators on this, and I love that there was a moment when it was supposed to be in more of a, "Okay, we're going to pitch this to Apple. We are going to pitch this to this person and that person." And the story might change. Julia, the story might change. It felt so much more politically driven of like, "No, we need to talk about her identity. We need to talk about her identity." It's like her identity, even for her, and you read some of the interviews that she gave, she was a jazz musician first and who happened to be half Coeur d'Alene. And so it's definitely a part of her story and I think it has an impact on you as a musician, as a person, this sort of cultural upbringing and those parts of your identity, but also this is a much more universal story of a woman who was an artist, who wanted her art to be the central focus and wanted control over her art, but who was very much undermined by the industry and by the men in suits on the other side of the glass in the recording studio. And when I'm talking to my collaborators, sometimes I get into my New Yorkie jazz musician sort of running and I get really animated and I get really mad talking about some of the experiences that I've had as a biracial woman in the jazz scene. And I can get really animated and I can get really cutting and I can get, my words aren't delicate or I can get out there and they're like, "Oh yeah, you know what you're talking about."
And that's a side of Mildred Bailey that I don't think a lot of people from the film industry really get. The jazz scene hasn't changed that much since then. I found a downbeat, I think it's from 1942. I've been getting all of these old downbeat magazines. And it's so funny because back then they were almost like gossip magazines about like jazz musicians. And there was one of the magazines, Mildred was on the cover and the entire article was so horrific in how they talked about her. They went to interview her and they said, "It's no wonder she's called the Rockin' Chair lady because all she can do is sit in a rockin' chair. She's so fat." And I think about the things that have been said to me as I've been coming up, just the misogyny and the commentary on my body."Oh, Julia, you lack the skills to be a jazz vocalist, but you clean up real nice."Yeah, this was said to me by a professor while I was in school. And so there are some things about the jazz scene that haven't changed. And I think that's a part of the Mildred Bailey story that folks outside of the scene might not get. And so being able to keep it sort of independent so we have that control to showcase here's a woman who wasn't delicate, who wasn't a delicate flower, who was easily manipulated, who really stood her ground and who was very much like brought down by the industry because she didn't want John Hammond to make her creative decisions for her.
I think that's the story and the fact that she was Indigenous, I mean, that just adds so much depth to who she was. Why was she eating as much as she was? Well, it was documented that she could swing from being incredibly happy to being incredibly sad. She had diabetes, which led to her heart failure, which eventually was the thing that killed her at the age of 52. There are so many cultural things and things that are prolific in Indian country then and now that contributed to who she became and who she was. So those are the elements that I want to explore. I don't want to get into the sort of like ... And it's obviously going to be part of the story of like, "Oh, she was white. No, she was Native. Oh, well, she sings like that. She must be Black." That's part of the conversation that was happening around her, but I don't think that's the whole story of her.
I would hate for her to be reduced to that conversation. But yeah, so the film is, it's in the early stages of development, but I have some really fantastic people who have been brought on board who are helping me and mentoring me and we are moving this forward together and I can't wait for Mildred Bailey to get her flowers.
Leah Roseman:
This might be a really great place to play another clip from that album. Can you pick a song that would be nice for people to hear a little bit of?
Julia Keefe:
Yeah, maybe Lover Come Back To Me. Might be a good one.(Music: clip of track 2 "Lover, Come Back to Me")
Leah Roseman:
And speaking of films, Sterlin Harjo, you were in this documentary "Love and Fury", but when I went to see it, it was like, this isn't available anymore.
Julia Keefe:
Oh, no. Huh.
Leah Roseman:
Maybe because I'm in Canada. I don't know, but I couldn't ...
Julia Keefe:
That might be. I think it's on Netflix. The distributor is Array, which is Ava DuVernay's production company. But yeah, "Love and Fury", that's such a great documentary. Sterlin Harjo is such a talented storyteller and he knows how to craft a beautiful story. And with this documentary, he really wanted to highlight contemporary artists just doing their thing. And the figure who kind of ties the whole story together is this beautiful folk singer named Micah P. Hinson and how he's sort of living over in Europe at the time and just sort of documenting the ups and downs of being a contemporary Indigenous artist. And so I do hope that you get to see the film. It's a really great film. And I'm so honored that Sterlin asked me to be a part of it and he's also become a very dear friend. I love Sterlin Harjo. He's so funny.
He's like my kooky, wacky cousin that's sort of like my older cousin who's just kooky and wacky, and we just laugh uncontrollably. I'm surprised we got through that interview because we just kept laughing uncontrollably,b ut I do hope you get to see the film.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, just a really quick break from the episode. I wanted to let you know about some other episodes I’ve linked directly to this one, which I think may interest you, with the Ojibway trumpet player Chuck Copenace, the Cherokee cultural activist and songwriter Agalisiga Mackey, Vahn Black with her Gladys Bentley project, Renée Yoxon a nonbinary and disabled gender-affirming voice teacher and jazz musician, and Naomi Moon Siegel the jazz trombone player who has advocated for intersectional gender justice for many years through her workshops for fellow educators and music students. In the show notes you’ll also find a link to sign up for my newsletter, where you’ll get exclusive information about upcoming guests, a link for my Ko-fi page to support this project directly, where you can buy me one coffee, or every month, and my podcast merchandise store. You can also review this podcast, share it with your friends, and follow on your podcast app, YouTube, and social media. All this helps! Thanks. Now back to my conversation with Julia.
Well, we were talking about the Indigenous big band at the beginning of this. You mentioned Jim Pepper. So he was a really interesting musician. He founded the Free Spirits. He died kind of young of cancer, but he was encouraged to start using some of his heritage in his music. Do you want to talk about him a little bit?
Julia Keefe:
Yeah. Jim Pepper ... So in grad school, I listened to "Witchi Tai To" from Jim Pepper's album, Pepper's Pow Wow, every morning to get hyped up for the day because grad school, like anyone who's been through grad school for any specialty, it's such a hard time because you're just getting pummeled by education and you're like, "But I chose to come back. I chose this. This is the life I've chosen. I only have myself to blame." I loved grad school, but I needed Jim Pepper because "Witchi Tai To" is this beautiful anthem. And what's so cool about that album is that it came out in 1971 and it begins with a peyote chant. And so Jim took that peyote chant and created this rock, jazz, Indigenous fusion anthem around it and expanded upon the lyrics. "Water spirit feeling spinning around my head makes me feel glad that I'm not dead." And you just go through this cycle of that chant and those lyrics. And it was really such a huge moment, I think, in US history. I have no evidence for this, and I say this at our big band concerts too. I have no evidence to support this, but Pepper's Pow Wow came out in 1971 and it was this inclusion, this fusion of tribal, Native, spiritual songs with jazz, with sort of contemporary music. And then we saw the American Indian Religious Freedoms Act in 1978.
So I like to think that Pepper's Pow Wow had an influence on US policy. Again, I have no evidence to support it, but the fact that we were able to see something like that at a time when it was very much illegal and at a time of heightened tension between American Indians and the US government, I think it was such a revolutionary act for Jim to release this album and to really bring his Indigenous perspective to the forefront in the music. The whole album is this scathing indictment on the US government and an act of rebellion and an act of liberation in this wonderful jazz fusion form. So Pepper is, Jim is such a huge inspiration for me coming up, introducing myself as a Native American jazz vocalist, especially in my younger years, sometimes audience members would get sort of confused and almost aggressive with me when I would introduce myself in that way.
"What do you mean by that? "I got that a lot. And so oftentimes if I wasn't talking about Mildred Bailey, I wouldn't bring it up. I would just be a jazz singer who was just singing her favorite jazz standards and leave it at that.
But it really wasn't until I got to grad school in my late 20s and I was listening to Pepper and then later getting connected with Delbert and sort of seeing that sort of organic amplification of their Indigenous identity and really fusing it with their music. It took that long for me to sort of feel empowered and comfortable enough to bridge those two identities. I think I needed to see it and really be educated by the folks who have done it and done it in a way that wasn't sort of like cultural cosplay. For the longest time, I thought that taking some of my tribal melodies and putting it in a swing ... Well, it all swings, but to put it in sort of a jazz context, it didn't feel right for me. I thought that it would be cultural cosplay and I just didn't feel comfortable doing it.
And then I saw the way that Delbert crafts a melody and it's done with such openness and with such heart. And that's how I felt listening to Pepper's Pow Wow.That's how Jim approaches his melodies and approaches his compositions. And then I started ... It felt more organic for me in that way.
Leah Roseman:
So in your early childhood, you did grow up on a reservation in Idaho?
Julia Keefe:
Yes. So I was born in Seattle and my dad got a job on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. So shortly after I was born, the family moved over to Chevy Chase, Maryland, and I was there for a few years. And then my family moved back to my tribe's reservation and I lived in Kamiah, Idaho for about six years in my childhood. And Kamiah, Idaho is a really small lumber community on the banks of the Clearwater River. I loved growing up there. I think I was young enough to not really see any sort of racism because a lot of tribal lands, a lot of reservations now, it's not just natives living on those lands. You have folks of all backgrounds living in tribal communities, and that was because of the Allotment Act. So something that the federal government did was essentially take tribal lands and say," You know what?
Each tribal member will get an allotment or a certain number of allotments. "And so they broke up the tribal lands into these smaller parcels that were given to these tribal members. However, because those parcels were, it was a larger number of parcels than there were tribal members, tribal lands became smaller and smaller. And so the parcels that were left over were then given to white farmers or whoever wanted that parcel of land. And so you do have this integration of folks in tribal communities. And so I grew up with Native and non-Native friends in elementary school. I remember going to my first protest when I was probably maybe six or seven, and that was because the school board at that time was trying to make it so that Native children couldn't attend the public school. So they were using school funds to basically keep tribal children from attending.
And so I do remember that protest, but of course for me, six or seven year old brain, it was like, " I'm dressed in regalia. I'm hanging out with my cousins and I'm holding a sign and we're having fun and people are playing pow wow music in the background and like, oh yeah, we're just holding this sign at the elementary school.
But of course, looking back, I can see the wildness of that memory, but I grew up singing in the church, so my family on my mom's side, the Nez Perce side are Presbyterians. And so we went to Second Presbyterian Church in Kamiah, Idaho every Sunday. But the beautiful thing, it's sort of a double-edged sword. So the beautiful thing about going to church every Sunday is that's where I also learned my language. I learned Nimipuutimt the Nez Perce language because when missionaries came through, they translated a lot of their Christian hymns into the native languages as a way of indoctrinating.
So that has its own sort of level of insidiousness, but the other side of that is that it was a language preservation tool as well. So being able to sing these beautiful hymns in the Nez Perce language every Sunday was a really, it's a cherished memory and a great education for me growing up. And also we still had our pow wows, so being able to go and listen to pow wow music. I never sang in a drumming group. I never sang in a pow wow group, but I remember sort of emulating those vocalizations and that sort of how to project and how to hit that higher timber and the brightness with that tambour that comes with that singing, at least where my tribe is from, it is higher. It is a bit more cutting across the vibrations of the drum. There are different, it's singing styles in different regions where it is lower and it is a little bit more like projecting from your chest voice.
And so it's like a rounder sort of richer sound. It's cool being able to go and listen to different drum groups and how they sing because it does differ from region to region.
But my childhood in Kamiah, I only have fond memories. Even the protest memory is a happy one, but that's because I had the child's perspective of a pretty dark protest.
Leah Roseman:
So many listeners of this podcast don't live in North America and they probably don't know that much about the residential school history. And something, it's come up before on this podcast, but I was curious to know the connection with bands. So I found this academic paper that I read some of, you might be familiar with this research, that in these residential schools, there was like the earliest bands because it was sort of this military connection, but bands weren't in regular schools at that time.
Julia Keefe:
Yeah. So I mean, that was part of that education and part of that indoctrination was teaching schools was teaching children from tribal lands by way of music because music is such a huge part of our culture. And the Indian boarding school experience, these residential schools, the ethos of it is really summed up well by the person who was responsible for Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, which was "kill the Indian in him to save the man". And part of that sort of killing of that Indigenous identity is really reeducating these children to subscribe to this type of musical style. And so you had your military schools, you had your federal government schools, and you had your religious schools, and they all had that same sort of mission. And so all of these children learned religious songs, they learned marching band music, they learned how to play in this Western style with these Western instruments as a means of divorcing them from their cultural practice of singing and drumming.
And from that education, these students who were fortunate enough to survive that education, they came back to their tribal lands with this knowledge of Western music, this knowledge, these Western instruments.
And what's interesting is that from a psychological standpoint, and I don't think there was much knowledge of this at the time, but music is an experiential therapy for coping with trauma. And for many of these students, I'm sure during that time of being at these residential schools, having that instrument was like having a best friend in the midst of an incredibly traumatic experience. So coming back from those schools and having that trauma packed on with it, these students were able to continue with music in their tribal communities. And the music at the time, when the boarding schools were at their height, I would say, was at the early iterations of jazz. So you have ragtime, you have blues, you have things of that nature. You have marching band music, which of course was incredibly big, John Philip Sousa, that time period, it was happening sort of simultaneously.
And so you had marching bands, you had jazz bands, you had small jazz ensembles that were popping up in tribal lands all over the US and Canada as a result of that brutal education.
There's a story of ... So Billy Frank was an amazing activist for fishing rights in the Pacific Northwest in the US. A statue of him is going up in the United States Capitol, but his father went to boarding schools and there are stories from Billy Frank's family of his father playing his horn on the banks of the Nisqually River and playing ragtime music and how there is something healing about being able to play this music, absolutely, but that's definitely Definitely a result of cultural disconnection and how do we cope with that cultural disconnection? And music is a therapeutic tool and a protective factor in post-traumatic stress, depression, and suicidality, which is very prolific in tribal communities to this day.
Leah Roseman:
Well, you talked a little bit about your experience during your master's. So you moved to New York to go to Manhattan School, and I noticed you had some vocal mentors. I wondered if you wanted to talk about any of them, Kate McGarry, Jo Lawry, Theo Bleckmann.
Julia Keefe:
Oh my gosh. I decided I wanted to go back to grad school while I was teaching at Gonzaga University in their jazz program. It's a very small program and they don't have a vocal track, but there were students who wanted jazz vocal lessons. And so I was teaching at Gonzaga and I just loved being back on campus. And I loved nerding out on jazz with these vocalists. And it was while I was teaching there that I got the bug to just, I need to go back to grad school. And the only place I wanted to go was Manhattan School of Music. It was the only place I auditioned at. It was the only place I applied to. And I got in. I was one of two vocalists who got in that year. And I got to study that first year with Kate McGaryr and Theo Bleckmann, whom I absolutely love.
I had such a beautiful time working with them. And I told them, "I want to get my ass kicked. That is why I am coming back to grad school. I don't want to be told I'm good at this thing or whatever.I want you to really whip me into shape." And they did. And Theo is such a wonderful musician. And Kate and Theo, they kind of come from different sides of the same coin. Theo wants it to be weirder and he wants it to be like, if you're going to do something standard, flip it on its head. I don't want it to sound anything like everybody else does it. I want you to put it in an odd meter, do a crazy reharm. I want you to explore the different facets of an existing song or take a song that's completely separate from jazz and flip it on its head. He had this amazing exercise that he took us through where he had flashcards with different images on it. He was like, "I want you to vocalize these different images and we're going to guess what the images are." And I loved that exercise because it broke down all of the ideas that I had about what it is to be a jazz singer.
"You're listening to jazz, 89.5 jazz singer", right? And so Theo, he wanted it weirder and he didn't want me to do straight ahead swing. I was very much living in the 1940s. Don't pull me from the 1940s. I don't want to go beyond the 1940s. That's where I was living as a jazz singer. And he pushed me into uncomfortable places as an artist, and I'm so incredibly grateful for that. Kate was, she's so lyrically driven, which the sort of musical theater side of me really resonates with. But what she did was, "I want you to take one of your favorite songs and I want you to take the music away, look at the lyrics, and let's recraft this song based on what you get out of these lyrics." Because the way that this song was composed before, who knows what the intention was with how they composed and composed around these lyrics.We don't know if the lyrics came first or if they came later, but let's reimagine this and reimagine it in a way that only makes sense for you." And I absolutely loved that side of exploring this music.
Kate was so ... She's so heart forward in her approach to music. Her storytelling is just phenomenal. So that first year, I got both sides. I had two extremes that I got to play with, and it really was. We were cranking out new arrangements every week, and they delivered on that promise or on that ask of really kicking my ass. After the second year, Kate ended up moving back to Durham and wasn't teaching at the school anymore.
And so then Jo, Jo Lawry came in and I got to study with Joe almost exclusively. I had a few lessons with Theo, and of course Theo was still pushing me in these ways, which I loved. And Jo, I was going through a really difficult time my second year of my master's. My parents were going through a divorce, which at any age is difficult for a child.I was 29, but it was still incredibly difficult.
I went through an unfortunate sexual assault on campus with a professor at the school, which was awful. And so I feel kind of bad for Jo because so much of what I was going through was deeply personal and traumatic in its own right. And so a lot of our lessons were essentially turning to music as, like I said, a therapeutic agent, as an experiential therapy for someone who was dealing actively in the midst of trauma. And so in some ways, I feel bad for Jo because I'm sure we could have done so much more under different circumstances, but she really got me to focus in on the music and focus in on different music. She introduced me to Egberto Gismonti and Brazilian music in a way that I hadn't really experienced before. She wanted me to do really, really complex and difficult melodies.
She had me working on Fred Hersch music, and she really wanted me to dive deep into existing material that was outside of what I've ever done, but was really challenging for me. And I don't know if it was intentional, but she really ... Oh, don't cry, Julia. I graduated because of Jo Lawry and I am so grateful to her for meeting me where I was in the midst of all of that and challenging me while also giving me the space to process what I was going through. Yeah. My vocal teachers, my vocal professors at Manhattan School, they got me through it in a really difficult time. And yeah, I'm still friends with them. Whenever Kate and Jo come to the city, I go and support them and I'm there. And Theo has helped me so much, even with the big band music and how I incorporate more of myself and more of my tribal melodies into things.
He's such an easy person to play with musically. And yeah, oh gosh, my time with those three, there are huge chunks of my heart that are dedicated to all three of them.
Leah Roseman:
I'm so sorry to hear you have to deal with all that. And sexual assault with a professor. Was the school supportive? Were you able to bring charges?
Julia Keefe:
The school was supportive. I brought it to them, but there's also a side of the institution needing to protect itself. And so I did come into conflict with the school at certain points of the investigation. What really sealed everything and solidified my complaint against this professor was that another musician in the jazz program saw him, saw him put his hands on me and came forward and I will forever love her. I didn't know that she came forward, but to have ... Because I was told, "Oh, we talked to him, Julia, and he said he understands how you misunderstood him. So it's done now, Julia. You have to keep this confidential. You can't talk about this anymore." And again, it's an institution. It's a business. It needs to protect itself, and I recognize that.
But for me, I kept thinking about the other students at the school who are younger than me, a majority of the students at that school don't speak English. English isn't their first language. I can't just take that at face value when I think about the other students who might come face to face with something similar. How do we hold people accountable in these programs? And so I wrote down my testimony of everything that had happened from the first time I interacted with this professor to the incident itself, to the aftermath, to my interactions with the school and their Title IX coordinator. I wrote down everything and I submitted that to the school. I reached out to a colleague of mine who also saw him put his hands on me and I said, "Can you please write a testimony just talking about your experience of what you saw?" She wrote that and she submitted that to the school.
And then this other female student who came forward, and I didn't know about it until she later, as we were getting closer to graduation, she told me, she was like, "Hey, I hope I didn't overstep, but I came forward" and then I broke down. We were in a coffee shop and I broke down crying and I was like, "You have no idea what you did." And I'm like, "Thank you so much. " I will forever be grateful to her. So eventually in the midst of this investigation as evidence was mounting provided by me, provided by other students, this professor ended up leaving the country. And so when I had my talk with the provost, they were like, "Well, he left the country, so we can say that we'll never work with him again. We'll never contract with him again. This is something that we'll document." But that's sort of the extentof the investigation or accountability rather. And I was talking to my aunt who was a federal prosecutor in Seattle. She was sort of counseling me through this whole thing and she was like, "Julia, do you want to bring something against the school? Because that also was kind of distressing." And at that point, I was so close to graduation. I was like, "You know what? No, I just want to get that paper and get out of here." And I want to honor and I loved my time with my professors at Manhattan School of Music with the exception of this experience. I mean, being able to work with Jo and Kate and Theo, learning from Phil Markowitz, learning from Jim McNeely, the late Jim McNeely, so much of my experience at Manhattan School was beautiful and I got my ass kicked and I am so grateful and I want to maintain certain relationships.
Was it distressing to go through that experience? 100%, 100%. And there is a part of me that wishes I had taken more action against the school itself and how it handled that investigation that I kind of had to conduct on my own in order to hold this professor accountable. But yeah, at that time, I couldn't.
Leah Roseman:
But when this episode is released, I will have already released my episode with Lara St. John. So a lot of what we talk about is how these institutions protect these people, these predators, and then they go to another institution.
Julia Keefe:
That's definitely the thing that frustrates me about this because, okay, he won't be hired at Manhattan School, but that doesn't mean he won't be hired at Juilliard or at Berklee or at any other school or program where there are other students who might be in vulnerable situations, who might be in more vulnerable situations where he is able to capitalize on that. And this was one thing that Jo told me in the midst of all of this. She was like, "Julia, these institutions protect themselves. The Title IX coordinator is also the HR person for the school. It is their job to squash this, and so you need to protect yourself." So with Jo in my corner and with my aunt in my corner, I was able to get more legal guidance on how do you document this and how do you make a document an official document?
And this really upset the Title IX coordinator at that time. I wrote everything down, I documented, I took notes after every meeting with the Title IX coordinator and anyone at the school, and I put it in a document and I sent it to the Title IX coordinator and I CC'd Jo and I CC'd my aunt because once you have other ... In the US, once you have it communicated with another person outside of that direct exchange, it's an official document unless we go into discovery. If there was a lawsuit, discovery would allow for that document to come into play, but because it was included with another person as an official sort of representative of the student, it became an official doc.
Leah Roseman:
And Julia, at the beginning of this interview, you mentioned a really ugly comment from a professor. Was it that same professor who had assaulted you?
Julia Keefe:
No. Yeah. So that ugly comment came from a professor in my undergrad, so that was the University of Miami. But it just goes to show that this treatment of women, and it's not just in jazz. I mean, it really is any arts program, the treatment of women, the treatment of anyone who is vulnerable, these are almost like breeding grounds for predators.
These are hunting grounds for predators because we are there in our vulnerability as artists looking for mentorship, looking for guidance. Art in and of itself is a vulnerable pursuit because we're bringing all of ourselves, we're bringing our traumas to the forefront for our art or using our art to help us process our traumas. It is a vulnerable time. And what is so devastating about higher education is that folks who are not there to serve the art, who are there to serve themselves, are able to get into positions of power in these institutions and take advantage of students when they are most vulnerable.
Leah Roseman:
Well, maybe we could just switch it up as we get towards wrapping this up. Like you opened for Esperanza Spalding, speaking of a great mentor.
Julia Keefe:
Oh my God. Esperanza, so this was back in 2017. I opened for Esperanza Spalding at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. And I had been going to Lionel Hampton every year from junior high through high school competing as a jazz vocalist. And my senior year, I finally won my division, which was such a great way to end my campaign at Lionel Hampton. And then to have 10 years later, Lionel Hampton asked if I would sing with the Lionel Hampton Big Band to open for Esperanza. And it was such a magical evening because first and foremost, Esperanza is just brilliant, just a brilliant artist and human. So being able to watch her set after I got to perform was awesome. I think I scared her when I came up to her for a photograph because I used a bunch of expletives. I was like, "You were f - . You were amazing." Whoa. And I was in my little dress. I was looking very cutesy, but I came out with this cursing like a sailor, telling her how fantastic she was. But what's been beautiful about this sort of ongoing relationship with Esperanza is that we were able to reconnect when the big band went to the Kennedy Center. And so in the midst of this conversation about what the programming will look like for the Kennedy Center, we were able to get this nice big residency week in the lead up to Mary Lou Williams Jazz Festival. And we asked if Esperanza would be willing to come and hang out with us during that residency week, and she agreed. She was really excited about exploring the Black and Indigenous intersectionality in jazz and the evolution of jazz and the shared experiences, what differing experiences. And then she came on and sang a couple of tunes with the band, which was a surprise for audiences, but she's just been amazing.
And speaking on sort of gender inequality and misogyny and jazz, I mean, being able to talk to Esperanza has also been fantastic because she has seen it all. And she's also a person who takes no shit. She is very much a no nonsense person. And we were talking about even the contracting side of things. She was like, "Julia, don't give away your good ideas for free to these presenters." She's like, "Don't be consulting for them for free." And she was like, "And I know as a musician who's just getting started, there's that scarcity mindset of like, yes, we can do this performance, but we can also do this and we can also do this. And please agree to work with us." She was like, "Don't consult for them for free. What you bring to the table has value and if they want what you bring to the table, they have to pay you for it.
" I was like, "Yes, a thousand times. Thank you. Thank you for that. " And in the midst of the week that we were there, I mean, being a woman who runs a big band and a jazz vocalist who runs a big band, I'm met with a lot of sort of grief or whether it is spoken or unspoken from some of the cats in the band. And that's fine. That's kind of par for the course, but in the midst of that week, it did sort of come to a head. And being able to confide in Esperanza, she was a support. She was like, "Julia, I see you. I see what you're doing.
You have been called to this and you didn't ask for it. You have been called to do this work." And she told me this beautiful story about how the world doesn't function without women. And I mean, she said it so much more articulately. She is a poet, even just sort of like when she's going on rambling in the way that I'm doing now, except for ... Yeah, she's a poet when she does it, and I'm just a rambling person. But being able to know Esperanza and work with Esperanza is a beautiful gift and an education just to be around her. I have learned so much just by seeing the way that she holds herself and moves through this world. Everything is sacred with her. And I really cherish that. And yeah, she's taught me so much about how to carry myself and see myself to not apologize and to take up the space that I need or the space that I ... Just to take up my space and to not shrink for anybody else.
I don't know. She's been a gift to this art form and I think to this world, I'm a big fan of Esperanza Spalding.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I think that's a great place to leave this unless there was something I didn't ask you about that you really want to talk about.
Julia Keefe:
No, no. I think this was great. Sorry I got choked up and sorry it went to the dark place. I don't know if that was the plan with the podcast, but it's just honest.
Leah Roseman:
I think we need to talk about these things.
Julia Keefe:
Yeah, I agree.
Leah Roseman:
So thanks so much. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Keep in mind, I've also linked directly several episodes you'll find interesting in the show notes of this one. Please do share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. All the links are in the show notes. The podcast theme music was written by Nick Kold. Have a wonderful week.
