Grammy-winner Bill Miller plans Y., UVSC workshops

PROVO — Native American Grammy Award winner Bill Miller will host workshops at Brigham Young University and Utah Valley State College today (March 30) and appear at a Provo Tabernacle concert tonight to raise funds for an impoverished South African preschool, the Zamani Educare Centre.

Miller, a Mohican Indian from northern Wisconsin, won the Grammy Award for best Native American Artist last year. He performs with acoustic guitar and flute.

His music, released in 10 albums, goes to his Native American roots and Western folk and blues traditions. He has toured the United States for the past 25 years and with musical groups Pearl Jam, Tori Amos and the Bodeans. The singer-songwriter's latest albums are "Spirit Rain and Cedar Dream Songs."

The Zamani Project, a nonprofit organization that draws support from the Kaiizen Foundation (a local humanitarian and charitable group), sponsors Miller's benefit tour.

BYU professor Christopher Meek, who teaches in the organizational leadership and strategy department, founded the Zamani Project several years ago. BYU students in the International Field Studies program have spent time working with the school located in a squatter camp of 80,000 impoverished Africans.

When David Kay, a student, and Meek's son were there in 2004, the school, a conglomerate of shacks made of scrap material, burned to the ground. After the pair returned to BYU in the fall of 2004, they began organizing fund-raisers to help rebuild the school. Others, including parents of BYU students who have worked in the preschool and Christopher Meek, had already donated to the project.

"Miller's participation in our fund-raising efforts has given great hope to the teachers and students of Zamani," said Kay. "We plan to perpetuate that same hope by providing a safe and proper facility in which the Zamani children can be prepared for additional education."

Volunteers have raised more than $25,000 toward buying land to build a school for the Zamani Educare Centre.

Miller appeared on the University of Utah campus Wednesday. His agenda today is:

• 11-noon: Brigham Young University history department and Charles Redd Center lecture at the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium, "The Role of Native American Music in Ancient and Modern Native American Culture."

• 1-2 p.m.: Utah Valley State College Native Sun Club, Music Department and School of Humanities, Arts and Social Science workshop at Center Stage, "The Native American Flute."

• 3-4:15 p.m.: BYU sociology department lecture in room C-215, Eyring Science Center, "Racial Relations and Reconciliation."

• 7:30 p.m.: Benefit concert, Provo Tabernacle, 100 S. University Ave., Provo. Tickets are available at the BYU bookstore and at: www.bookstore.byu.edu/benefitconcert.

For more information e-mail: zamaniproject@yahoo.com.

---

E-mail: rodger@desnews.com