Ghost Dancer -- a song by Luke Painter, with a chorus of wolves

Описание: GHOST DANCER -- I wrote this song in 1996, reflecting on the mystery and tragedy of the Ghost Dance movement of 1890, the last desperate hope of a broken people. The Ghost Dance or Spirit Dance was a spiritual revival movement, promising salvation to those who had given up fighting and lost everything. Their way of life was gone, most of the people they knew were dead, and their children were starving. Into these broken hearts, the hope that Christ had returned as an Indian, and would resurrect the dead, and restore the earth and their way of life, if they would trust and pray and do the Spirit Dance – this hope caught fire and spread through the reservations of the western United States, beginning with a Paiute prophet named Wovoka. People danced and sang, and had visions. One of their songs said, “The people are coming home!” The spark of apocalyptic hope alarmed Indian agents, who ordered that the dancing must stop, and the instigators arrested. Thus, the Ghost Dance movement culminated in a bloody massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, four days after Christmas in 1890. This tragic end was perhaps as inevitable as it was unnecessary, given the history of such things. I wrote this song for them. It seemed appropriate to be joined by a pack of wolves.

“There was no hope on earth, and God seemed to have forgotten us. Some said they saw the Son of God; others did not see Him. If He had come, He would do great things as He had done before. We doubted it because we had seen neither Him nor His works. The people did not know; they did not care. They snatched at the hope. They screamed like crazy men to Him for mercy. They caught at the promise they heard He had made. The white men were frightened and called for soldiers. We had begged for life, and the white men thought we wanted theirs.”
(From a speech by Sioux chief Red Cloud, quoted by Dee Brown in his book, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee.)

Ghost Dancer was produced by Luke Painter. Guitar and lead vocals by Luke Painter, with Larry Penoza on bass, Bruce Johnston on piano, Guido Perla on drums, and Michelle Dedman on backing vocals. We used to perform this song live with Happy Savage. Wolves from a now unavailable recording distributed by the Natural History Magazine, “The Language and Music of the Wolves.” Slides are from the public domain, with paintings by Alfred Jacob Miller and George Catlin from the 1830s, and a photo by W. Henry Jackson from 1871.

Luke Painter
Ghost Dancer ©1996, 2020 Luke Painter