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Kevin Lewis Biography

kevin-lewis
  • Born:
  • Years Active: 1980s-1990s
  • Genre: World & Reggae

This Arizona native is responsible for two major collections of works in the Native American genre. His Navajo Peyote Songs collects 60 different songs over two volumes and represents one of the major studies of these songs available on recordings. In addition, Kevin Lewis has recorded two volumes of Ceremonial Songs and Dances of the Cherokee, representing music the Cherokee/Navajo native learned from his grandfather Bud Lewis who was 116 years old, and apparently also an active singer when the recordings were made, although he seems to have left cutting the tracks up to the youngsters. Although Lewis was a grown man when he made these recordings, he has been singing the traditional songs of several nations since he was six years old. He is a medicine man and part of the Kee Yaa Ane or "towering people" clan. On the Navajo album he collaborated with drummer Herschel Kaulity, a Cheyenne/Kiowa musician. The Cherokee collection contains some 50 different songs, accompanied by gourd or drum. The songs he recorded include corn dance songs, marriage songs, women's songs and tunes for the turtle dance, the stomp dance, and social dances. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi

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