Santee Luke Witt: Pine Ridge artist releases new album ‘Star Struck’
KYLE, S.D. (KEVN) - Raise. The. Roof. Friday Santee Luke Witt drops his new album, Star Struck, featuring nine original songs. Witt recorded this album at the Wichapi Olowan Recording Studio at the Oglala Lakota Artspace in Kyle. The recording studio is the only “Playing for Change,” a music program in the US, a global program to connect people through music.
Witt was raised around music, he says somewhere along the way he found he had a voice and could sing.
Witt walked into the purple-lit Wichapi Olowan Recording Studio to record an acoustic album. After his mentor, Talon ‘Bazille’ Ducheneaux shared some beats with him, Witt switched it up.
“When I first started this kind of work, I was sleeping on floors, barely getting by, and honestly in a rut in my life,” described Ducheneaux.
Ducheneaux and Witt say they use music for the same purpose, telling a story.
“There’s something greater that’s happening. I look at myself like a messenger, these songs come to me,” said Witt.
Witt wrote ‘Into the Light,’ during a dark period in his life.
“Into the light represents coming from the darkness I was in, that mental realm. Still being the man that I am, working, staying on top of things, but deep down going through what this is. But as a man, you aren’t supposed to.” Witt says he felt overwhelmed. He was in the middle of a divorce, becoming a single dad, and teaching. However, music remained with him.
In the music video for the song ‘Into the Light,’ the hill Witt stands on has many different stories. Now, just beneath the hill is the school he teaches at. Witt recalls a time at this hill when he was young, “During the summer I used to take a walk and pick sage and I used to go over the hill where the video was shot and sit there and look at the camps below.”
For Ducheneaux producing music is recording the present history.
“I also find myself crying in today’s time when I see audio archives of Oscar Howe and Buddy Red Bull. I never saw that before, and I’m 30. I should’ve seen that when I was two, I should have heard that when I was five. To help build me into a respectable Lakota/Dakota.”
Oscar Howe’s bright visual art is credited with shaping contemporary Native American art. Buddy Red Bow recorded several albums in the 1980s and ‘90s, he was inducted into the Native American Music Awards Hall of Fame in 1998, five years after he died.
Here’s how to listen to Witt’s new album:
You can also check out the album on all music streaming platforms, like Spotify and Apple Music.
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