Yo-Yo Ma has been searching all his life for how to live. The We Are Water: A Northeast Celebration concert that celebrated the reopening of the was one more step in that ongoing quest for knowledge from communities whose traditions offer other ways of seeing the world.
Ma, a co-founder of Silk Road Ensemble, has made a career building bridges between cultures and musical styles. This series of performances celebrating the waters of the North is a continuation of these efforts. He partnered with artists from the Wabanaki community—a collaboration that began in 2021 when Ma met artist and educator Chris Newell ’96—to learn their stories, traditions and life lessons. Together they created We Are Water, a work inspired by the region and commissioned for the reopening of the Hop in October.
“We are all water,” Ma said in a interview. “It could be a very dangerous place, or it could be the place that gives us, literally, life. It’s both. And if we’re water and we’re nature and we’re both creative and destructive at the same time, then that makes me think differently about who I am and how I should live.”
Indigenous artists Newell ’96, Jeremy Dutcher, Mali Obamsawin ’18, Roger Paul and Lauren Stevens were some of Ma’s partners on the project, as were other collaborators such as fiddler Ida Mae Specker and Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason. Together they curated a body of songs and stories that explore how the waters of the North—from Kwenitekw (the Connecticut River) to Supeq (the ocean) and Punkik (the Arctic North)—connect us to each other and to our past, present, and future.
Newell, a Passamaquoddy musician and the Native American Cultural Director at the University of Connecticut, described the project as a tribute and a call to action: a way of paying credence to waterways at a time when, as he put it, “our water is in crisis.” Returning to Dartmouth held special meaning for him, especially in working with Native students. “We were able to involve not only members of the Native Americans at Dartmouth student organization as companion singers, but also the Hōkūpa`a students, who greeted Yo-Yo at the sunrise concert and performed with us.”
The day before the sunrise gathering, Ma reflected on how the river would become part of the music, “if the music has already started and the river is flowing and you join the river … you’re already part of it.” He compared it to the sound in a recording or recital hall where “there’s the energy of every single person in the room and the air and the air conditioning or the heating or whatever else is there, and you join it. A room is filled with living people. Nature is filled with living things. And whatever happens, you include it.”
On the morning of the performance, the artists gathered on the banks of the Connecticut River north of campus in Hanover to greet the sunrise with songs and gratitude. More than 300 people—including more than 75 Dartmouth students—braved the morning frost and assembled on the shore or in boats floating beside the site-specific performance. The project brought together artists, students, faculty, and community members in a shared reflection on our relationship to water.
Ma, a , and his collaborators developed the work during his residency last month and engaged with Dartmouth students and faculty members through class visits and a house brunch. We Are Water was a collaboration with the Department of Native American and Indigenous Studies, Native American Program, Department of Anthropology, Department of Music, Department of Geography, Sustainability Office, and Dartmouth House Communities.
“We Are Water was the perfect centerpiece of the Hop’s reopening because it embodies what we hoped this moment would be—a work that touches every aspect of our community,” said , Howard Gilman ’44 Executive Director. “It gave us new ways to think about our home here in the Upper Valley, our relationship to the river and the earth, and the role the arts can play in shaping how we see the world around us..”
On the evening of Saturday, Oct. 18, in a sold-out Spaulding Auditorium, the concert featured a mix of Indigenous and Western traditions—from classical music and folk songs to Wabanaki myths and Icelandic lore.
“There was no musical director,” says Specker, a fiddler who grew up in southern Vermont, “rather we were all attempting this fusion of musical, different musical backgrounds, different styles, different skill sets, different understandings of rhythm and melody and timing and keys. All of us were trying to find common ground together.”
Ma performed a Bach medley on the cello as well as duets with Dutcher, Obamsawin, and Stevens.
“Like water, like nature,” Ma said in his welcoming speech, “we humans are also both destructive and creative. Only when we choose creativity do we become stronger, more resilient, more collaborative. Our survival cannot be separated from that of a planet that gives us life.”
Roger Paul sang of Aputamkin, the sea monster from Native American mythology who lives in the Passamaquoddy Bay and who serves as a cautionary tale against taking the waters for granted. Aputamkin was brought to life through puppets by Shoestring Theater.
Specker took the stage to reflect on the flooding and drought in the Upper Valley region. She lamented the view of rivers only as a commodity and a resource to be taken from. “I want to be part of carrying forth this wisdom that’s being generously offered this evening, combining it with creativity and forging a pathway forward,” she said.
Later, Specker reflected more broadly on the role of music itself: “Music really has the power to emotionally bring people in large groups of people into that collective dream state where we can really imagine in a completely depoliticized way, how we can leave a healthy environment, a healthy planet, to the next seven generations.”
Icelandic poet and author Magnason, who grew up in Hanover and considers it his second home, shared stories from his book On Time and Water, blending myth and science to reveal how glaciers are melting away. “To understand science I needed mythology, to be rational, I needed poetry, to understand the future I connected to the past,” he told the audience.
As the evening drew to a close, artists joined together in songs of hope: Only Her Rivers Run Free, Amazing Grace, and a final Honor Song with audiences singing along.
The concert ended on a hopeful note with Roger Paul calling on people to give thanks, connect with their past and take responsibility. “We’re all connected to water. We’re all connected by music. We’re all connected by life and creation.”
Moments later, the evening spilled out into the Hop Plaza, where Ida Mae Specker’s band led a jubilant square dance, watched over by a giant mother puppet figure. The revelers braided hands and crisscrossed the plaza in wild and rippling paths, seeming at times to have finally become the waters.
