"Music to sustain the heart." - Time-Life

“The National Endowment for the Arts recognizes Kevin Locke as a Master Traditional Artist who has contributed to the shaping of our artistic traditions and to preserving the cultural diversity of the United States.” - National Heritage Fellowship, NEA

  
Kevin Locke (Tokaheya Inajin is his Lakota name, meaning "The First to Arise") is known throughout the world as a visionary Hoop Dancer, the preeminent player of the indigenous Northern Plains flute, a traditional storyteller, cultural ambassador, recording artists and educator. While his early instructions were received from his immediate family and community, from his extended family in every part of the world Kevin has learned many lessons in global citizenship and how we each can draw from our individual heritages to create a vibrant, evolving global civilization embracing and celebrating our collective heritage.

Kevin Locke's concerts and presentations at performing arts centers, festivals, schools, universities, conferences, state and national parks, monuments and historic sites, powwows and reservations number in the hundreds annually. Approximately eighty percent of his presentations are shared with children. He is a dance and musical hero and role model for youth around the world. His special joy is working with children on the reservations to ensure the survival and growth of indigenous culture.

Kevin Locke is acknowledged to be the pivotal force in the now powerful revival of the indigenous flute tradition, which teetered on the brink of extinction in the latter half of the 20th century. Kevin was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), which recognized him as a "Master Traditional Artist who has contributed to the shaping of our artistic traditions and to preserving the cultural diversity of the United States."

As a folk artist he is often characterized as being from a tribal-specific background only. But Kevin draws from deep wellsprings of knowledge, distilled and refined over many generations, yielding a profound sense of the universality of the human spirit and its inclination toward harmony, balance, beauty, peace, and the sacred. Through movement and dance, sound and music, Kevin conveys this universal spirit through his stories, music, humor, and dance, both in performance and workshop/lecture settings.

“Kevin Locke’s heartfelt call for self-esteem, racial harmony and spiritual wholeness is a genuinely uplifting statement in song, word and dance.” - Calgary Herald

“His work was thought-provoking and dealt with many serious social and ecological issues yet was so gentle, with its message so intrinsically a part of the performance, and of such fine quality that the overall presentation engaged the audience on all levels.” - Lincoln Center for Performing Arts