In this episode, we talk to Grammy-nominated and award-winning Diné, or Navajo, musician Aaron White. The program was cancelled in person by lightning, so this is an online exclusive! Aaron discusses his career, growing up with music, and how he came to be a musician. Later, the discussion turns towards the Native American flute, which Aaron both plays and builds.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Aaron White: You know, music is a very powerful tool, and I'm just glad to be a part of it. I'm just a little part of it in a very big world that we live in.

Ranger Melissa: Welcome to Grand Canyon Speaks. My name is Ranger Melissa.

Ranger Jonah: And my name is Ranger Jonah.

Ranger Melissa: Hey, Jonah. Who is this episode with?

Ranger Jonah: Yeah. So, in this episode, I talked with Aaron White. He is an award winning and Grammy nominated musician. He also plays and builds the Native American flute, which is what he did when he came out here to the canyon.

Ranger Melissa: Yeah. And this interview is for your ears only. It was actually rained out in person. Inside this area we lost power that day for several hours and had to use flashlights to illuminate the space that we recorded with Aaron at. His music, though, is absolutely beautiful and mesmerizing. He doesn't even need electricity for his acoustics. But hearing about his life story while talking to you, it felt like it came straight from a rock and roll magazine.

Ranger Jonah: Yeah, absolutely. And Aaron also does the theme music for this very podcast series, so we were really honored to have him come speak as well. So, without further ado, Aaron White.

Ranger Jonah: Welcome everybody to Grand Canyon Speaks. This is one of the more unique programs that we've ever done. We were unfortunately stopped from our regular program time due to lightning. So, we are currently sitting in a living room doing this recording, and we are doing this recording because we have such an amazing presenter today. We are talking to the Diné musician and artist, flute maker, among many other things, Mr. Aaron White.

Aaron White: Hello. Good evening.

Ranger Jonah: Well, thank you so much for coming out and doing this. It is certainly the weirdest of the ones that we've done so far, but I think we're going to have fun with it.

Aaron White: I think we just got to take it with a grain of salt.

Ranger Jonah: All right, well, I guess my first question is, where are you from?

Aaron White: Well, I'm from the Northern Ute Reservation, where my mother's from, but I'm also from Kayenta, Arizona. My father is Diné, Navajo. My mother is Northern Ute, but I grew up on and off the reservation, northern California, the Bay area. I was born in Oakland, California, grew up in Niles, California, which was home to the first Hollywood. And I just recently found out I grew up right across the street from the Charlie Chaplin studios where they filmed one of their silent pictures called The Champion, which was black and white. It was a silent picture back in 1915, I think it was. It was a Charlie Chaplin film. But we lived right across the studios, right across the road.

Ranger Jonah: And you never got into filmmaking?

Aaron White: That never happened.

Ranger Jonah: You never got into making talkies?

Aaron White: No. How about that?

Ranger Jonah: So you were a touring musician for 13 plus years. So, how did you first get into music? Did you grow up with it. Was it always around? Of course, in the Bay Area I imagine you had some music around.

Aaron White: Yeah, I grew up with it as far back as I can remember. I was always doing plays, doing live performances. I did one of my first performances with a gentleman by the name of Roy Rogers who had a horse named Trigger. He came to our school and we did a performance for him in Roosevelt, Utah, and this was near the Ute Reservation. And I did a lot of performances as a kid with plays and things like that, but music, as far as I could remember, has always been a big part of my life.

Ranger Jonah: So when you were growing up, was that primarily flute music or guitar? Piano? What was your introduction instrument wise?

Aaron White: It was a little bit of guitar. I remember taking guitar lessons from a gentleman when I was probably, like, around six or seven years old. I first learned basic guitar and how to use my voice. I remember the first song I ever did was probably (How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window? Which is an old American classic. And then I was doing a song by a gentleman named Glenn Campbell. Galveston was a piece that I had done, and my mother used to take me to a restaurant in Roosevelt, and I would sing for tips when I was just a little kid.

Ranger Jonah: So you really have been working as a musician since the early days?

Aaron White: Yeah, I never saw any of that money. (Laughter)

Ranger Jonah: Where did all that happen to go? So you've always grown up with music, and then, of course, your main touring group was Burning Sky, right?

Aaron White: Yeah. My first professional, I guess, gig was when I was in the military. I was 17, and I had a band called Excalibur, and I just recently had been in contact with an old drummer friend who was part of the group. And we were a military band that was based out of Schofield Barracks, Hawai'i. And we played at all the EM clubs. Kaneohe Marine Base, Pearl Harbor, Hickam Air Force Base, Barber's Point, around the island of Oahu. Then we also did some clubs in Waikiki and Pearl City and around the island, and we were only, like, 18 years old. We were playing in a rock band.

Ranger Jonah: Having a good time, I imagine.

Aaron White: Yeah, it was great. That name is Homero Chavez, and he got a hold of me through Facebook and found out he made a career out of music as well. So out of all the members in a band, two of us chose to have music as a career.

Ranger Jonah: Are you expecting a future collaboration to come out soon?

Aaron White: We talked about it; you know. He's out in L.A. He worked with a lot of different groups and recording artists, and we just kind of compared where we were at, and we met in Southern California. We were actually on a vacation going back to Hawai'i. And so, we stopped in and had dinner with him and his wife. So, kind of a little, you know, I was looking at old photos that he had of us, and I mean, we were just kids.

Ranger Jonah: Just rocking out!

Aaron White: Just having a great time and serving in the military as well.

Ranger Jonah: Well, so you're serving in the military. You're starting with these sorts of rock and roll bands in the beginning, and how does that develop from there? What's the next step?

Aaron White: Well, I had always played music, like I said, learned from a lot of different people. And being in the Bay Area, we were always surrounded by music. I remember seeing the Escobedo family playing at this place called Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland. The Escobedo family being Sheila E. And her family. Her father was a pretty well known musician and was playing with different groups. Malo, which was a very big band at the time. In the 70s, we'd see a lot of different groups that were up and coming. Some of the bands that came out of the Bay Area like Journey, Santana, Craig Chiquico from Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship. Just so many different people in the Bay Area. Such a big influence. We'd have bands come to our high school during lunch and they would play for the students. And one of those bands in the beginning was a gentleman by name of Brad Gillis, who went on to play with Night Ranger and Rubicon. I was always surrounded by music or musicians, and great musicians at that. Yeah, being there when people were first starting out, it's a pretty big influence.

Ranger Jonah: So how did they influence you? Did they influence you from a touring life perspective as you sort of saw them develop and grow, or from a musicianship perspective?

Aaron White: Just seeing them performing and them having showmanship and good songs and things like that.

Aaron White: Well, good songs do tend to help. Makes the music process a little bit easier. You know, you grew up with all of this different influence. What was the kind of music that you were listening to?

Aaron White: I listened to everything. I mean, I listened to everything from Tower of Power to Weather Report to Sammy Hagar, Black Sabbath, ACDC. Growing up, my father listened to a lot of country. Waylon Jennings. Just no matter where I was, I was always surrounded. Like I said, with music, music was just something that was always there.

Ranger Jonah: So did you tend to connect with one sort of genre more than another?

Aaron White: Probably. Rock music was a big thing. And being a singer fronting a band at the age of 18, it was an experience, you know, facing people. We played at some pretty historic places. The old Haleiwa Theater in Haleiwa on the north shore of Oahu, opening up for different people that came to the island, or playing in clubs where places would just be packed with people. There'd be two or three bands playing in one night, and in Hawai'i, the clubs back then would stay open until four in the morning and the legal drinking age was 18. So people who graduated from high school on the mainland came to Hawai'i to celebrate their graduations, a bunch of crazy 18 year olds. And then when the clubs would close down at four in the morning, people would pour into the streets and stuff. It was just pretty amazin