The cylinder recordings of Frances Densmore, made at the beginning of the 20th Century and archived in the Smithsonian, served as a research source for this project. Densmore's transcriptions often contained one tempo marking for the voice and a different tempo marking for the drums. In some of her transcriptions, she indicated a change in tempo for the drums, but not for the voice. This is a practice unfamiliar to the European ear and provides a clue as to the importance of the drums in Native American music.

In October 2007, a contest of Native American dancers in Rapid City, SD provided an opportunity to study the role of drums in live performance. The books of musicologist Ron Theisz gave further insight.

By coincidence, I was reading John Tavener’s “The Music of Silence” and found this passage on page 97: “The great music of the Americas comes from the Indians…. it has a divine ray, and it is “poor in spirit” in the deepest sense, which is far more important than being rich in vocabulary.” Tavener is a spiritual minimalist, constantly seeking to find the simplest means of expressing his most devout sentiments. One of his techniques is the use of pedal point, the sustaining of a single note or chord throughout a composition. The technique carries back to Bach and Gregorian Chant, but Tavener takes it to new levels. He refers to this single note as the “ison,” the “eternity note,” and its presence in the composition represents the presence of the “Almighty.”

I postulated that the drums represented the same spiritual connection for the Native Americans, and I decided to apply the "ison" principle to this project. Right away I was in trouble. The original instrumentation included only solo piano and narration, neither of which could be used to provide the sustained “eternity note.” The piano is a percussion instrument in this context. Piano notes begin to fade as soon as they are struck. But I realized that the same affect applies to the drums, so I began to apply a repetitious, single-note pattern immediately after the introductory chords. Once the piece was fully orchestrated, I could assign the "ison pattern" to a more appropriate instrument and use drums in their traditional role.

The use of this "patterned-ison" approach keeps the music underneath the narration, and it is only abandoned when the focus shifts from the Native Americans to elements in the white community of Alliance. At times I superimposed “Western-White” themes over the "patterned-ison," such as in the section on the school system which uses Copland-like open fifths as school bells, or in the mention of white religion where I superimpose the first notes of the hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

Yes, I do shift the "patterned-ison" note a couple of times in support of tonal modulation. I found the ear will tolerate a long, sustained tone when it is truly sustained, but when that note is presented as a rhythmic pattern, as it is with the drum beat, the ear becomes fatigued much more easily.

The "patterned-ison" principle is abandoned once the focus reaches the “bricks of Box Butte” and the street noise of white America. The story of alcohol and King’s Korner is laid against an unassuming folk tune in 6/8, from which a single, rhythmic phrase is extracted to drive the movement to an angry ending.

The "patterned-ison" technique is re-introduced in other movements of Alliance, such as the repeated C pedal-tone in the Orchard movement, and the A-sharp and D in The Parade’s death scene.

The three sustained chords at the beginning of the Overture Movement frame the separation of the area known at that time as Indian Town from the white residents of Alliance. That separation was marked by a railroad overpass, a creaote- soaked structure with steep embankments that stood like a portal into another world. The photo above was taken by Mr. Lincoln a few decades after the events of 1969. Mr. Lincoln's photo faces south into Indian town. The intersecting dirt road at this junction, barely visible in the photo, is 1st Street. The overpass at Potash Avenue and 1st Street is prominently featured in Kenneth Lincoln’s book. South Potash Avenue is now paved and the overpass has been widened and reinforced with steel siding along the tracks, but you can still get a sense of the "other side" from looking at the photo.

Potash Avenue runs north and south through Alliance and continues 3 more blocks into Indian town on the other side of this overpass, as shown in the Google map. No other street in Alliance directly connects the northern part of the city with Indian town.

In the early part of 2010, the Google Street View Mapping Van visited Alliance, Nebraska, and photographed almost every street and alley in this community, but not Potash Avenue.

There is a photo of this overpass in Google's Street View Map because Google's mapping van drove down 1st Street, parallel to the railroad tracks, and past the overpass. But Google's van never went through the overpass into Indian town, it never came down Potash Avenue approaching the overpass, and it never went on the other side of the overpass into the southern part of Alliance. While most of the other avenues that parallel Potash are identified and "drivable" in Google's Street View Map, Potash Avenue is neither identified nor "drivable" in this area of town.

Something stopped 21st century technology from mapping Indian town in south Alliance. What a curious exception. It seems only proper that the opening shot in the visualization of Alliance focus on this symbol of segregation.