April 2003 MINNESOTA MONTHLY

native                   
sounds

TO SEE 47-YEAR-OLD-ROCKER Paul LaRoche at the keyboard with his long black hair and fringed buckskin jacket, black jeans, and cowboy boots, yo u ' d never guess he grew up in a white, middle-class family in Worthington, Minn., and later worked as an engineer in the Twin Cities. His adoptive parents told him his dark, Native American features could be attributed to French Canadian roots—he says he believes they did it out of love to protect him from prejudice. "It's one thing to grow up knowing you're adopted , " he says. "But imagine waking up one day to discover you belong to a different culture. I dis covered my Lakota heritage in 1993 after the death of my adoptive parents, and my first visit to the reservation literally transformed my life."

Like many boys growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, LaRoche loved rock 'n' roll and played in several bands. He had decided to give up pursuing music as a career when he learned that he'd been born on the Lower Brule Sioux Reservation in central South Dakota. He began to explore his heritage, and poured his feelings about his newly discovered roots into music. His new band, Brule, combines Native American flute and drum sounds with rock 'n' roll key-board and guitar, and Brule won "Group of the Year" and "Best Instrumental Recording" for its newest release, Star People, at the 2002 Native American Music Awards.

LaRoche and his family live on the Lower Brule Sioux Reservation. Even when the family isn't at home, it is together, touring and playing festivals around the country, including the Edina Art Fair, where the band appeared last year and is scheduled to appear this year. LaRoche's wife Kathy, 47, is the band's manager; daughter Nicole, 23, plays flute, and 25- year-old son Shane LaRoche plays guitar. Other band members are a second guitarist, named simply Vlasis, and drummer Eagle, who pounds the beat on a traditional Native American drum made from a hollowed-out cottonwood tree trunk and stretched buffalo hide.

LaRoche ' s mission with Brule is to bring a message of hope, reconciliation, and peace to his audience—a mission that succeeded in his own life, he says, helping him reconcile his authentic roots with his learned ones. Says LaRoche, "I've found that [music is] a way for two cultures to be harmonious. "

Barbara Marshak is a freelance writer based in Lakeville, Minn.