"Weaving the Strands" is an exclusive music compilation by contemporary Native American women featuring some of the most talented Native American women artists performing today. This collection is dedicated to contemporary Native American women artists whose style, energy and spirit have added a beautiful dimension to this increasingly popular genre of music.Chosen from a dozen recent recordings by contemporary Native American women artists, the music of Weaving the Strands is a banquet of spirited sustenance, reflecting the various passages, celebrations, and phases of feminine life. There are call and response and group chants, songs of meditation, worship, and joyous revelry as interpreted by women from tribes including Chippewa, Mestizo, Cherokee, and Muscogee. New listeners of Native American music may well be surprised by the marriage of anticipated flute, drum, and chant, and chant with plugged-in jazz guitar and country fiddle. Liner notes wisely provide information on the artists and the original recordings from whence their contributions come. Among the most well known in the group, Navajo songmaker Sharon Burch renders two of the most moving compositions, the reflective "I Walk Alone" and "Sacred Wind," featuring an extraordinary fiddle line twining round her expressively centered vocal. --Paige La Grone
