“THIS IS VERY LIKELY only the second time a Diné trumpeter has performed this piece,” Delbert Anderson tells a hushed audience from the stage at El Morro Theatre, in Gallup, earlier this year. Then he lifts his instrument and the solemn notes of “The Holy City” ring out, filling the Spanish Colonial Revival auditorium.

Accompanied by pianist Robert Muller, Anderson plays the 1892 hymn, which blares with an authoritative spirituality. But after the moving story he has just told onstage—about the forgotten Navajo musician Jacob C. Morgan (1879–1950), a guest artist with the Government Indian Band who was invited to perform this very cornet solo everywhere from Paris to the St. Louis World’s Fair more than 120 years ago—a warmer, almost familial energy seems to weave into the piece. 

It’s what it sounds like when a legacy is revived. Anderson says that though Morgan was well-known, especially among the Diné, for his prominent political and missionary work, few records of his musical career survive. But Anderson is on the hunt. His ongoing research into the Diné trumpeter’s history is the centerpiece of Sounds in Place: Music of Diné History, People, and Land. Anderson and Muller performed the new program of stories and songs accompanied by slides in Gallup as part of a busy concert schedule that regularly takes the Kirtland-based composer, educator, and artist much farther from home. 

Jacob C. Morgan circa age 20. Photograph courtesy of Maurice Johnson.

“Before knowing anything about [Morgan], I was hosting these Jazz Jam concerts at Orchard Park in Farmington,” Anderson says. “He did the same thing with his concert band, Saturdays at Orchard Park. He was one of the first to have concert bands that were mixed race.” Anderson began to trace his and Morgan’s parallels during a 2021 Jazz Road Tour with a grant from South Arts in conjunction with the Bureau of Land Management, in which he visited tribal communities in the San Juan region where Morgan left his musical DNA. 

“I would play jazz and also share a lot of information about Jacob Morgan, since he was highly involved,” Anderson says. “When he got out of college, the military band started to use him so much that he would be a featured soloist. There’s a letter out there with three lieutenants or captains arguing over him—like, We need him for this festival!”

During a 2023 Institute of American Indian Arts residency, Anderson delved deeper, finding Morgan’s written reflections on the Long Walk and a book of hymns he translated from English to Navajo. With more funding, Anderson recently tracked down a Morgan descendant in Montana, who found the classical musician’s old cornet, which he had taken around the world, in an attic. Anderson showed a slide of the Conn instrument at the Gallup concert.

Jacob C. Morgan’s rediscovered cornet. Photograph courtesy of Delbert Anderson.

“People always ask me, ‘What is a Native American guy doing playing trumpet?’ Especially jazz, for that matter,” says Anderson, who first discovered his own instrument in public school band class. But when he began researching Morgan’s time playing with the Government Indian Band, which was comprised of top players from Indian boarding schools, Anderson realized the spirit of improvisation was with them too. “Every ancestor we had that went through [the boarding school era] probably picked up an instrument at one point,” he says. “It’s this bittersweet feeling, you know. A lot of things were forced upon our tribe, but we still made something out of it.”

His next mission involves applying for grants to help connect with the old cornet in person and take it on tour to play the Jacob C. Morgan music Anderson is still rediscovering. “I’m still talking with the families, and they definitely want me to play it,” he says, then adds that he ultimately thinks the instrument belongs in a museum. In the meantime, he’s helping to lobby the city of Farmington to erect a statue of Morgan in Orchard Park.

The Delbert Anderson Quartet performs locally and nationally throughout the year. Find record release info and tour dates at delbertanderson.com.

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