Mirabal has done it again ... my heart actually buzzes in my chest when I hear a winner! I've been following Robert's career for some time and with each release his talent resurfaces stronger than the time before! In The Blood just made me happy ... with some of his previous tunes reworked just for this album, Medicine Man, Eee-You-Oo and The Dance just excellent! And the new songs Indian Johnny, Pottery Shard Man and Brave New World throw a powerful spotlight on the beautiful and continuous evolution of Robert Mirabal's music! The production is stellar, the artwork is flawless. Mirabal is a perfect example of what happens when you do what you were born to do!

Photo: Jack Spratt

It's unusual when an artist so firmly entrenched in one genre of music crosses over into another and molds it into a whole new kind of music. Robert has taken his Native roots and made them work in today's culture by combining history with rock, jazz and soul. In short...it rocks!

Robert Mirabal has never left us guessing who he is with his music. With the release of his latest CD, In the Blood, Robert continues to stand strong in the heritage, in his feelings and in his blood. A masterful blend of old and new, this CD delivers to us a fantastic journey through a world apart from the mainstream, yet just as real. Robert's words create a visionary experience that dances to the tempo of the music and the drum. You won't be bored!

Robert Mirabal is the most creative person I know and I am thrilled that his new album "In the Blood" takes his music to the next level. The songs are solid and true, the production is stellar and the energy behind this music is a powerful force. Go directly to the brilliant "Brave New World" and hit "play". My bet is that like eating just one Lay's potato chip, you won't stop there! Bravo!

Photo: Jack Spratt

Robert Mirabal is one of my 'safe artists', i.e. it doesn't matter which one of his CDs I pick, I always know that I can find great songs, a good sound and some of that Native sense of humor that always cracks me up. In the Blood did not let me down! For me, the definition of a good album is one that has a song for many different moods, so that whether you want to have a party, laugh, cry, be romantic or learn about another culture, you can find a song to go with it. In the Blood is that kind of album.

With their music, Robert Mirabal and his group really transported us to an entirely different world, beyond time and space. That music was full of love. It was really like a river of love-flowing. We were all like honey bees, enjoying the honey.

We have been tracking Robert Mirabal's music on Transitions Radio Magazine for more then a dozen years now. His newest album, "In The Blood" is a reflection of his songwriting and artistic maturity. Along with some excellently reworked and enhanced favorites like, "The Dance," "Ee-You-Oo" and "Little Indians," his new compositions, particularly "Brave New World" and ""Tsel-mo-ah (Butterfly Song), journey to a new level of diversity and style.

Photo: Jack Spratt

Taos Chamber Music Group’s Stupendous Concert
Fowler, Mirabal, Laupheimer, Guenter
October 21, 2007
By Bill Whaley

The Taos Chamber Music Group's marked its 15th Anniversary with a remarkable concert on Sat. Oct. 20. The collage of juxtaposed classical, traditional, and pop styles managed to celebrate its virtuoso musicians-Flutist Nancy Laupheimer, Cellist Sally Guenther, multi-music-master Robert Mirabal, while featuring the creativity of composer and arranger, the classically trained Paul Fowler. Fowler's tropes on musical styles pushed the envelope of chamber music well beyond this layperson's expectations or experience. 

Last night's sold-out concert not only delighted the audience with Antonio Vivaldi's fairly traditional Trio Sonata in A minor and presented Sally Guenter solo in Fowler's “La Vie Zazou” and Nancy Laupheimer in Rhonda Larson's “Movin' ON' for solo flute, which required the flutist to play without seeming to take a breath, but also displayed Robert Mirabal's facility on traditional Native American (or other?) flutes during “The Ancient Language of Breath.”
Contrary to expectations that Mirabal would improvise or be featured as an addendum to the program, whether singing, drumming, playing one of several flutes, he and his Native American creative voice were fully integrated into the concert. Robert's ease and facility gave the impression he'd been rehearsing and playing with formally trained classical musicians as a matter of course. Whether Mirabal improvised on flute with Fowler on piano or took center stage with”The Ancient Language of Breath” with Laupheimer and Fowler, or participated with all three musicians, including the fabulous cellist Sally Guenter (a Taos School of Music grad of yore) in the grand finale, “On Taos,” composed for the occasion by Fowler, Robert's mastery of the form and presentation of the quasi-classical styles displayed the fruits of one of the hardest working musicians in Taos.

If there was a star in the concert, apart from the ensemble and the music, it was composer and keyboardist Paul Fowler. He played the synthesizer, rattles, drums, and strummed the strings on the piano not unlike a Harpo Marx liberated from conventional expectations. I mean Fowler manhandled that baby grand piano, running his fingers or a hand across the strings, slapping the grand from below, above, and on its sides to get the percussive sounds, while also tending to the ivories for their sweet sounds. As he turned that baby upside down and inside out, I was reminded of one of those street musicians, who use their hands on body parts and beat garbage cans while creating compositions with their urban licks. You could also see Fowler's influence in “ZaZou,” the piece he composed for Cellist Sally Guenter, who, similarly, took advantage of the cello's percussive potential with a slap or two beside the throat. Before and after the bows, Paul played prop man and stage manager, setting up the chairs, checking the sound and making himself as useful to the technical presentation as he did to the musicians and audience members for whom he composed and arranged an evening of tasty musical pleasure. 

Bravo Nancy 9the founder and director of TCMG) for a concert well done and well appreciated. You raised the standard. Just as the Harwood will be hard pressed to surpass the Diebenkorn show, so the Taos Chamber Music Group will be hard pressed to step beyond last night's “Special Anniversary Event with Robert Mirabal.”

Songs for our times: Mirabal's 'In the Blood' gets under your skin

Native American vocalist/multi-instrumentalist to perform tonight on OU campus November 2nd, 2007

By Adam Scott; Entertainment Editor, Norman Transcript

I was a little hesitant to review this album; my past exposure to Native American artists often brought me in contact with music that seemed so lost in the distant past or so lost pushing in the direction of possible limits of the future it was tough to interpret, let alone relate to.

Robert Mirabal's "In The Blood," his ninth album and his first in four years, is anything but lost, capturing sounds and themes relatable to many people from many cultures in the present day. It showcases the Native American flutist/percussionist./vocalist's great depth of talent at creating vibrant soundscapes with a variety of instruments and effects.


The brief intro "Big Chief" sets an uncertain yet energetic mood with sounds of chains, a door opening, distorted chattering voices and an electric hum.

This in turn leads to the funny yet touching "Medicine Man" a tale of a man who can "razzle-dazzle ghosts" yet has trouble getting the love of a woman to do his bidding likewise. Chronicle of violence and hard living "Indian Johnny" follows, arguably the most staightforward rocker of the bunch. The occasional punctuation by gunshots on the track is jarring but drives home the message of the cost of not staring down prejudice like few other sounds can.

With a strong traveling blues kind of feel to it, "Brave New World" it tells of a girl's odyssey in pursuit of a better life, love and world as she wanders the railways.

"Holding Up The Sky" conjures up iconic visions of journeying the roads very fast with a purpose, somewhat in the same vein as a little tune made famous by Norman Greenbaum and closes with Mirabal's recitation of a quote by Sitting Bull that blends confusion with hope and adds a new depth of poignancy to the song.

"Little Indians" was probably my least favorite track but this is probably due to its slower, more relaxed pace compared to most of the other songs. Still, it's smooth as honey, has an important message of using introspection to discover what's important in life and it would make my job a lot easier if every song I reviewed was this good a listen.

The seventh track, title song "In the Blood," makes me think of the first time I stopped and looked up at a clear winter night sky near nothing much at all but the highway in eastern New Mexico. In short, description does it little justice and it's not to be missed as firsthand experience. Make it to tonight's concert if you can, for it will be most memorable.

The next two songs, both sung mostly in Mirabal's native tongue of Tiwa, include the breathtaking "Tsel-m?-ah (Butterfly Song)"which gives the sense it is about love, healing and faith even before Mirabal makes a mention of this in English and "Ee-You-Oo" which has no similar guidepost but has such driving flamenco guitar and percussion you likely will find yourself dancing anyway.

A reflection on the past, "Theo's Dream" looks at a bittersweet slice of Mirabal's youth on a reservation, focusing mainly on the fears, prejudices and other difficulties faced by his uncle, a wounded soldier, and in turn how Mirabal inherited many of these calling to mind some of the most angry and engaging work by the Beat poets, closing with a succinctly powerful "Please don't forget."

"Things Are Different Now" makes me think a bit of the sound of many of the songs by Crowded House and mixes the forlorn and the forward-looking even as it melds English and Tiwa.

I thought the album was winding down to a quiet close but "Pottery Shard Man" speeds things up a bit with a dark and uncertain sound and lyrics that has a late-'80s first-Bush-adiministration-era rock feel.

Closing song "The Dance" is a sonic trip through centuries of suffering and change, fear and marvels, reminding the listener no matter what else comes and goes, its title topic endures.

An intriguing blend of the very traditional sound of Native American flute and drums with modern electric guitars, synthesizer and more can be found throughout this, for lack of a better word, gorgeous-sounding album.

Robert Mirabal performs tonight in the Paul F. Sharp Concert Hall at Catlett Music Center at the corner of Elm Avenue and Boyd St. To any Native American music or light rock appreciator who can't make the show, don't think twice about picking up "In the Blood;" the mix of lavish arrangements surrounding Mirabal's generally relatable messages and the album's heart, his slightly rough but warm voice that sounds somehow like it comes from a friend.