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2001 NEA National Heritage Fellow Fred Tsoodle Mountain View, OK Kiowa sacred song leader

The Kiowa of southwestern Oklahoma have long been known as great singers and composers of songs. These songs range from traditional healing and gourd dance songs to more modern intertribal pow wow songs. Fred Tsoodle, while conversant in many of these musical traditions, specializes as a song leader of a unique repertoire of Kiowa sacred Christian music. The tradition of sacred Christian singing began among the Kiowa people in 1893 when missionaries came to southwestern Oklahoma. The earliest sacred song was a Christmas song composed by Deacon Gotebo, the first Christian convert at Rainy Mountain Baptist Church. The Kiowa say that there is a song for every religious occasion commemorating the holy holidays as well as significant stages in life such as birth, baptism, and death. There are probably more than 200 of these hymns, each with a unique tune and lyrics in the Kiowa language. The primary way of keeping these songs and performing them is through human memory. As the recognized song leader in the Rainy Mountain Kiowa Indian Baptist Church, Fred Tsoodle is the performer and keeper of this valuable cultural repertoire. Pulitzer prize-winning author N. Scott Momaday reinforces the importance of Tsoodle's work: "These hymns constitute a unique expression of American folk and religious music, bringing together as they do the deepest and most human elements of both of these rich traditions. The result is a unique and profoundly spiritual American music. It is one of our national treasures and it deserves to be preserved for its own sake. Fred Tsoodle has done more than anyone I know to preserve it."

 
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