Raven Chacon
Raven Chacon (b. 1978, Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation) is a composer, performer and installation artist. Chacon has been a recording artist for 24 years, and his work has appeared on over eighty releases, on national and international labels.
Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, Los Angeles; the 80th Whitney Biennial, New York; Borealis Festival, Bergen; SITE Santa Fe; Swiss Institute for Contemporary Art, New York, among others. In his capacity as an educator, Chacon is the senior composer mentor for the Native American Composer Apprentice Project, NACAP. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass, going on to being awarded the MacArthur Fellowship in 2023.
Raven Chacon Silent Choir
2017
Field recordings / Sound installation 12 min 8 sec
Courtesy of the artist
Silent Choir (2017) captures a moment at the Oceti Sakowin camp, near Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota during the 2016-17 No Dakota Access Pipeline (NoDAPL) Resistance. The piece documents the silent protest of hundreds of water protectors and land defenders, led by Indigenous women, staring down the armed police sent to suppress the gathering. The sonic trace not only describes what can be sensed, but also opens up to what may be imagined. It amplifies the echo of a movement that stood unshakable, in strategic unity and prayer, maintaining its resistance through nonviolence.