From Walatowa (Jemez Pueblo), Malcom Yepa’s contribution to New Mexico’s music industry is prodigious and unique. Malcom is an accomplished musician as a singer, drummer and composer both in Native American Pueblo and Powwow styles. Malcom was raised in the traditional ways of his ancestors – fluent in his Native language Towa – and is a paraprofessional educator. Malcom is recipient of the New Mexico Music Commission’s 2018 Platinum Music Award.
In 1989 while in Montana, Malcom was captivated with the Powwow style of singing and drumming. Upon returning to Jemez Pueblo, he created and led the Black Eagle Powwow Drum Group. Over 28 years, Malcom led Black Eagle in a style that was new to his Pueblo People and become internationally known and admired in the North American “Powwow Circle.”
Black Eagle, whose CD’s are Grammy and Native American Music Award winners, have contributed to New Mexico’s music industry through their original music, continuous teaching of multi-generational singers from youth to elders, as well representing New Mexico Native American music and culture.
Throughout their travels, Black Eagle have always proudly represented Jemez Pueblo and the State of New Mexico gaining the respect of the music community which led to award acknowledgments of Black Eagles’ outstanding original compositions.
above: Malcom’s tribute video from the 2018 Platinum Music Awards show at the Lensic. Filmed and edited by Bunee Tomlinson of Windswept Media. Produced by the New Mexico Music Commission Foundation, David Schwartz Executive Producer.
Recipient of the New Mexico Music Commission’s 2017 Lee Berk Award, Catherine Oppenheimer, a former professional dancer with the New York City Ballet, has provided opportunities for talented young musicians throughout the state to receive top-quality music education. In 1994, she co-founded the National Dance Institute of New Mexico, a statewide organization annually teaching nearly 10,000 children throughout the state. In 2010, she was also the driving force behind the creation of New Mexico School for the Arts, the state’s first residential high school for the performing and visual arts.
NDI is recognized for “Teaching Children Excellence,” and has introduced thousands of New Mexico children to dance training and performance experiences as an effective catalyst for character development and artistic expression.
Oppenheimer was also the driving force behind the creation of the New Mexico School for the Arts, New Mexico’s first chartered residential high school for the performing and visual arts. The charter school is dedicated to arts mastery and academic excellence assisting passionate young artists in developing their full potential.
An impressive artist in her own right, Oppenheimer danced with the New York City Ballet under the leadership of choreographers George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, and with the Twyla Tharp Dance Company.
Oppenheimer came to New Mexico to teach residencies with NDI in Santa Fe and in selected rural communities. NDI provides classes at its Dance Barns to all children who desire to study the performing arts regardless of financial capabilities.
In 2008, Oppenheimer was honored by the MS Society of New Mexico with its Award of Distinction and by the New Mexico Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts for her dedication to the arts.
In 2005, the readers of The Santa Fe New Mexican named Oppenheimer to its annual “Ten Who Made a Difference” list.
Under Oppenheimer’s leadership, NDI received a prestigious Coming Up Taller Award from the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, which was awarded by then First Lady Laura Bush.
Recipients of the New Mexico Music Commission’s 2017 Platinum Music Award, Bill and Bonnie Hearne became an institution in New Mexico’s musical landscape beginning in 1979, with their unique blend of Southwest Americana, bluegrass, country and swing music that influenced many artists including Lyle Lovett, Jerry Jeff Walker, Nanci Griffith and Eliza Gilkyson. After Bonnie quit touring in 2003 due to health issues, Bill formed a trio and quartet and continues to play and record his music. Bill’s most recent release, “All That’s Real” shows him as an inspired performer who has travelled many miles down the honky tonk road.
Bill Hearne calls it ‘The Road:’ that metaphorical ribbon of honky-tonks, roadhouses, empty whiskey glasses, prison cells and unrequited love lined with signposts and mile markers tattooed with names like Haggard, as in Merle, Williams, as in Hank, Owens, as in Buck and Lovett, as in Lyle. Being legally blind, Bill has never actually driven The Road himself, but he sings with such authority of the tales he’s heard while riding shotgun that you’d never know it.
Bill has a whole list of CDs available from the early releases with his wife, Bonnie such as “Most Requested: Best of Bill & Bonnie”, “Diamonds in the Rough”, & “Live at the La Fonda”. After Bonnie quit touring in 2003 due to health issues, Bill formed a trio & quartet and recorded “From Santa Fe to Las Cruces”, “A Good Ride”, “Bill Hearne Trio” & his most recent release, “All That’s Real”. Like the velveteen rabbit in the children’s story, the title “All That’s Real” describes Bill Hearne…he is “real” and he’s earned it from traveling many miles down the honky tonk road. He has a little less hair and his head is shinier these days just like the rabbit. “All That’s Real” is co-produced by Bill Hearne and Don Richmond, a master of many stringed instruments who owns Howling Dog Studios in Alamosa, CO, but has many musical ties with northern NM. Numerous area pickers and singers perform on the CD including Bill’s nephew, Michael Hearne, as well as some notable Texans, including piano man Earl Poole Ball (best known as Johnny Cash’s piano player, though he also played on the Byrds’ landmark country-rock album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo), and Jerry Jeff Walker, who sings his own “Dust on My Boots” with Hearne.
“They used to play a place called Corky’s in the Montrose area of Houston. I would get a seat right up next to the stage and sit in front of Bill and try to figure out all his guitar licks.” – Lyle Lovett
Bill doesn’t write his own songs. His greatness lies in his interpretive skills. His husky Texas baritone finds its way into a song’s interior with the mellowness of fine bourbon and the warmth of a Sunday picnic. And of course, there’s his pickin’, a style he calls ‘cross picking.’ He picked up the guitar when he was seven years old. “Since I didn’t have people to play with, I developed a style that incorporated a percussion rhythm while playing lead riffs. Basically, I tried to be a one man band,” he says. Like fellow cross-pickers Tony Rice and Doc Watson, Bill is improvisational. “I hardly ever play the same thing twice,” he says. Not only does he rarely play the same thing twice, he rarely plays the same song twice. His repertoire is as vast as Texas and New Mexico. Bill is the Real Deal, a genuine article in a country-music world that seems to have forsaken its roots.
“Bill and Bonnie Hearne … play the best darn folk music I ever heard.” – Nanci Griffith
Bill’s professional life began in Austin in 1968. It was there where he earned his first paycheck as a musician and met his future wife, Bonnie Cross. Bonnie’s mellifluous east Texas alto fit Bill’s picking like a glove. They toured TX, NM, and CO before moving to Red River, NM in 1979 where they became the house act at Chubbie’s Tavern. Fellow Texans, Tish Hinojosa and Michael Martin Murphy also moved to northern New Mexico, and Bill & Bonnie found themselves the center of a thriving Americana music community.
“Whenever I come to Santa Fe, I make a point of checking to see where Bill Hearne is playing. His music is evocative of all that I love about New Mexico and the West. They broke the mold when they made Bill – you should not miss the chance to witness him in action.” – Eliza Gilkyson (2015 Grammy nominee)
Fast forward a decade. Northern New Mexico’s Americana scene fades like high-country grasses in autumn and Bill & Bonnie move to Santa Fe where they sign on as the house band for La Fonda, a venerable downtown hotel. For 11 years, Bill and Bonnie delighted Santa Feans and countless tourists with their infectious blend of bluegrass, country and swing music. In 1997, Bill & Bonnie signed with Warner Bros. and recorded “Diamonds in the Rough.” Produced by country veteran Jim Rooney, it climbed to fifth on the Americana chart that year and led to tours with Lyle Lovett Music Festival, Merlefest, and the Kerrville Folk Festival. The wind seemed to be at their backs, but in 2003, Bonnie’s health deteriorated and she could no longer perform. On his own musically for the first time since meeting Bonnie, Bill formed the Bill Hearne Trio. In the trio, Bill is backed by Bob Goldstein on lead guitar, mandolin & banjo and either Zeke Severenson or Dave Toland on bass. Bill is in his 23rd year at the La Fonda and is still singing every Monday & Tuesday night with his Trio.
above: Bill and Bonnie Hearne perform “Roseville Fair” live at the Farm Aid concert in Austin, Texas on July 4, 1986.
Recipient of the New Mexico Music Commission’s 2017 Platinum Music Award for lifetime achievement, Arlen Asher (1929-2020) is one of New Mexico’s long-standing jazz luminaries. Born in 1929 in a small farming community in Missouri, Asher moved to Albuquerque in 1958. Prior to becoming a full time musician, he worked as an award-winning producer and announcer for KNME-TV, KOB-TV and KHFM radio. He left broadcasting to establish a private woodwind studio in 1965 and since then has been teaching woodwind fundamentals and jazz improvisation to hundreds of students throughout the US. In the 1970’s, he formed the Arlen Asher-Bob Brown Quartet, which formed the basis of two jazz television series for KNME-TV and a series of concerts that included guest artists such as trumpeter Clark Terry. In 1994, Arlen Asher joined drummer, John Trentacosta’s group, Straight Up. Asher has appeared on numerous CD’s including his own 2002 release, Another Spring , featuring a virtual Who’s Who of New Mexico jazz talent. He also appears on Straight Up’s recording Live Jazz in the Desert, a top selling local jazz CD in New Mexico. Straight Up has appeared at many jazz festivals, including the Tucson and Sedona Jazz Festivals and Jazz In The Sangres in Colorado. At 84, Arlen Asher remains active as a performer as well as hosting “The Jazz Experience” broadcast every Monday morning on Santa Fe Public Radio station, KSFR. Along with Arlen Asher, woodwinds; Straight Up features leader, John Trentacosta, drums, NY trumpeter Michael Morreale; Albuquerque born, NY based pianist, Tony Regusis; and Michael Olivola, bass.
above: Arlen Asher’s tribute video from the 2017 Platinum Music Awards show at the Lensic. Filmed and edited by Bunee Tomlinson of Windswept Media. Produced by the New Mexico Music Commission Foundation, David Schwartz Executive Producer.
When he was asked as a student at Zuni Elementary School in the late ’60s to write an essay about what he wanted to be when he grew up, Fernando Cellicion didn’t really have to think on the subject too long. He always wanted to be a famous musician, known all over the world. Flash forward to 1996. Cellicion is performing as part of a group of Native American musical artists on-stage at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Would his teacher and fellow students have believed that this would happen? No way. They looked at him as an oversize goofball, certainly not the type of person who would become a celebrity. But he is not the first accomplished musician to have been regarded practically with contempt by his peers, and indeed these sorts of deep feelings usually work their way back up to the surface, providing a musician’s work with emotional integrity. This is definitely the case with Cellicion, who has performed a variety of traditional music. However, he is best-known as a recording artist who stands out on the traditional Indian flute, performing in a genre in which there are many copy-cats, insipidly one-dimensional players, and compact discs practically reeking of incense and/or scented candles.
“It took a lot of work and not listening to critics, just keeping my focus,” Cellicion has said of his career success, which has also led to performing before royalty in France. An artistic background at home surely helped motivate him. His father, Roger Cellicion, founded the dance group the Traditional Zuni Dancers to preserve and pass on his knowledge of Zuni culture to his children. Eventually the group would be taken over by son Fernando, and it would become one of the artistic vehicles that has led to performances all over the world.
He began writing his own original compositions and learning a variety of traditional Zuni music when he was 22, resulting in more than ten different recordings released on labels such as Indian Sounds, Essential Dreams, and Oyate. His love affair with music really began in middle school with the band, which he joined because he was under the impression it would be a way to get out of doing schoolwork. In his first year, he played a baritone horn, but as is the case with many great players, not all that much was accomplished in the first 12 months of his musical life. He does claim, though, that by year’s end he could play a B-flat scale and “The Marine’s Hymn,” which is probably more than one could say for Eminem after selling millions of records. By the next year, Cellicion was making quick progress on his horn, falling more and more in love with being a musician and even starting to tamper with other instruments. By the time he graduated from high school, he was apparently playing a dozen different instruments. For eight years after high school, Cellicion played with the Zuni Pueblo Indian Band, eventually becoming the assistant director. In the ’80s, he became involved in powwows and organized a drum group. Not long after that, Cellicion tried playing a standard recorder. He noticed the similarities of the recorder to the flute, an instrument that he had always liked but had never really played. Soon after, he bought a Native American-style flute for only a few bucks and began to teach himself to play by following along on sides cut by R. Carlos Nakai and Tree Cody. Most of the songs recorded on his first album were pieces that he composed on the recorder. This was the first of several volumes, entitled The Traditional and Contemporary Indian Flute of Fernando Cellicion, released on the Indian Sounds label. He immediately established that he had created a unique repertoire, including not only music from the Zuni, Navajo, and Comanche people, but also interpreting Christian spirituals such as “Jesus Loves Me.” It was a time of declining interest in Native American music, with only about five well-known artists performing and recording on the traditional flute. Nonetheless, Cellicion found himself situated at the starting gate because there would soon be a contrasting rise in interest in what he was doing, with the lyrical sound of Indian flute music also appealing to the exploding new age market.
He put together a collection of close to a dozen flutes, all sizes and shapes, most of them gifts from their makers. After mastering some of his musical idol’s songs, he began to develop his own style and write his own music. He became known for creating a trance-like mood by his use of soft and delicate flute playing, often incorporating his velvety yet pock-marked voice. Native American mythology tells us that the flute was created by a woodpecker under direct orders from one of the gods, and the first man to play one found that it brought him many wonderful things, including marriage to the chief’s daughter. Perhaps the instrument has not brought Cellicion such a bride, but nonetheless his music has brought him to 17 countries, as well as demanding travel throughout the U.S. He also performed in Istanbul in the late ’90s. In 2001, his dance group took part in a massive festival of international artists in Taiwan. The group has also performed at a broad range of venues, including the World Music Festival in Tokyo and at the Gallup, NM, Intertribal Ceremonials, New Mexico State Fair, Connecticut River Rendezvous. They have also played at parades, celebrations, pow-wows, and other functions throughout the United States and have won many top honors in dance competitions.
In addition to his recording and touring successes, Cellicion has also been featured in several movies and television shows, such as Good Morning America and the Today show. His concerts have been featured on National Public Radio and National Native News, the latter program produced out of Anchorage, AK.
~ Eugene Chadbourne
above: Fernando’s tribute video from the 2017 Platinum Music Awards show at the Lensic. Filmed and edited by Bunee Tomlinson of Windswept Media. Produced by the New Mexico Music Commission Foundation, David Schwartz Executive Producer.
Cipriano Vigil is a 2019 New Mexico Music Commission Platinum Music Awards honoree. He was born and raised in the small village of Chamisal, New Mexico. He received his baccalaureate degree in Music Education from Highlands University. Upon completion of his undergraduate work, he received a scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in Bilingual Education, also from Highlands University. Another scholarship followed from the Mexican government. In Mexico, he studied at the National Institute of Fine Arts where he obtained a second master’s degree in Ethnomusicology. While studying in Mexico, he would go to every and any place where music was played, including dance halls and bars. From these excursions, he absorbed the knowledge of many different styles of music.
He began his career as a professor at Northern New Mexico College in 1980, and retired from that institution in 2004. It was during this time that he also completed his doctorate in Ethnomusicology, which he received in 1988. This same year he became the Chairperson of the Fine Arts Department, a position he held for ten years. Because of his love for music and teaching, he continues to work at NNMC as a part time instructor in folk music.
His early background and training in music instilled his with a passion for preserving and disseminating the folk music of northern New Mexico. From his several presentations at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D. C., to elementary school classrooms of New Mexico, and cowboy poetry gatherings in Elko, Nevada, he has presented thousands of performances and workshops. He has brought traditional music to various regions throughout the U.S. and has performed in several states in the country of Mexico. These presentations consist not only of traditional New Mexican folk music but also La Nueva Canción (the new songs), a style that originated in South America.
Cipriano produced a four volume set of traditional New Mexican folk music, with accompanying CDs that he uses with his students at NNMC. Another self published work is a collection of his own compositions written in the traditional style as well as the style of La Nueva Canción. He self published a manuscript of sixty-seven of his compositions for violin and guitar, which he uses with my folk ensemble class. He has written several compositions for theatrical performances and for films. Recently, he composed and recorded several one movement symphonic works named Poemas Musicales (musical poems). UNM Press is currently publishing a book he wrote of the folklore of New Mexico, which will be accompanied by twenty-one long playing CDs.
In his many presentations at local schools, he brings part of his collection of over three hundred musical instruments from around the world. He plays them and gives the students a little history of each instrument.
His presentations and performances have won several prestigious awards. These include being honored as a Living Treasure, the Governor’s Arts Award, and the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities Award. He has been nominated three times for the National Heritage Award for outstanding work in maintaining and preserving traditional folk music.
Cipriano’s son, Cipriano Pablo Vigil, and his daughter, Felicita Vigil Piñón, have performed with him in concerts for over 25 years. Recently, his granddaughter Marisol Vigil, his grandson Mitzael Piñón, and his youngest grandson Alonzo Vigil have been performing with them on stage.
above: video biopic short about Cipriano – premiered August 23, 2019 at the Platinum Music Awards show – created by Bunee Tomlinson of Windswept Media.
From Walatowa (Jemez Pueblo), Malcom Yepa’s contribution to New Mexico’s music industry is prodigious and unique. Malcom is an accomplished musician as a singer, drummer and composer both in Native American Pueblo and Powwow styles. Malcom was raised in the traditional ways of his ancestors – fluent in his Native language Towa – and is a paraprofessional educator. Malcom is recipient of the New Mexico Music Commission’s 2018 Platinum Music Award.
