Where is home? This is a question that has challenged many of us, but for indigenous people the question can be especially complex and painful. The Choctaw Nation, for instance, was one of many forcibly relocated to Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears. For many Choctaw, then, their home is both Oklahoma, their place of birth, and their ancestral lands in Mississippi. It is this connection to land, place, and home that Choctaw composer Charles Shadle explores through the pieces on a new album, Choctaw Places, recorded by the Lontano Ensemble with conductor Odaline de la Martinez.
The titular piece—rendered in Choctaw as Chahta Aiasha—has an added layer of grief and nostalgia with its origins in the 2020 lockdowns after the emergence of COVID-19. Shadle, a professor of music at MIT, was unable to visit Oklahoma and instead had to rely on his memories and ancestral knowledge for comfort.
The instrumentation alone creates a sense of nostalgia. Soloist Rachel Harwood White plays the oboe and English horn, which have long been used in European compositions to evoke images of shepherds and farmers. The string trio filling out the ensemble plays wistful, muted passages that add a sense of dreaminess to this pastoral effect. There is a peace to the music, but also distance—an idealized homeland always just out of reach.
These themes of loss and memory infuse the other works on the album as well. The Old Place, for instance, refers to a family home built in the nineteenth century. Tragedy struck the family and they abandoned it, after which rumors spread that it was haunted, and eventually it fell to ruin. Limestone Gap similarly meditates on a prominent ruin north of Shadle’s family land, and Red Cedar on a ubiquitous tree that often signals a cemetery.
A mournful and deeply personal album, Chocktaw Places reminds us of deep wounds suffered by the Choctaw Nation and all indigenous peoples. It also reminds us of the lives that can still blossom amid tragedy and the ways that deep roots can give us resilience in difficult times.
