Salamone at Hoyt Sherman Place, filming a music video for her song “Anthem for the Dreamers.”
Writer: Michael Morain
Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs
Last year the Des Moines violinist Genevieve Salamone received an Iowa Arts & Culture Resilience Grant through a program the Iowa Arts Council designed to help artists, filmmakers, musicians and writers adapt to the challenges of the pandemic.
And that’s what Salamone did. But the pair of music videos she produced demonstrate resilience in the face of a much older ordeal: specifically, the lingering trauma caused by centuries of discrimination against Indigenous people like herself.
A member of the Huron-Wendat Nation, which is based in what is now Quebec, Salamone plans to premiere her two new videos during “A Night of Resilience” at 7 p.m. May 21 at xBk Live in Des Moines. The multimedia concert will feature fiddles, drums, piano, spoken word, an aerialist performance and a few songs from “Catharsis,” Salamone’s first original album, which she released last year.
It was one of that album’s numbers, called “Brave,” that led to the new videos, which blend Indigenous and Western musical themes. Read more about Salamone and her musical projects, on the Iowa Arts Council blog.
