Intertwining urban American Indian Jazz with traditional vocals, pow-wow drums, an electric bass guitar and cedar flute, John-Carlos Perea feels that the musical history of Native Americans risks the danger of being forgotten.

In collaboration with SF State’s School of Music and Dance and the American Indian studies department, Perea and an accompanying ensemble will be performing seven original compositions for free in Knuth Hall of the Creative Arts Building on Sept. 27 from 2 to 4p.m.

Perea won a Grammy in 2007 in “Best New Age Album” for his album “Crestone.” The 33-year-old said he was shocked to receive such grand recognition for his work.

“Winning a Grammy at my age was one of the greatest feelings I’ve ever experienced,” Perea said. “I think most musicians dream about things like that, and to have it happen… it’s amazing.”

He was also aware that earning such recognition gave him a platform to discuss issues about preserving Native American history and culture.

“It’s another door to help those issues of erasure and history,” Perea said. “It’s another responsibility [which reminds me] that I have to work and keep on playing my music to help people keep on thinking and talking about it."

“If we don’t continue to do this work, then people won’t hear it,” he added. “Then we’re truly gone, and then the erasure [of traditional Native American culture] will truly happen.”

As an SF State alumni, Perea graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in music in 2000. He received his Master of Music from UC Berkeley in 2005 and is currently a graduate student there. He has conducted lectures on Native American music and creative performing arts at various colleges, including UC Berkeley, Stanford and Harvard. In San Francisco, he continues to perform with pow-wow ensembles.

With interests in music starting at an early age, Perea began guitar and piano lessons as a child. He picked up the bass guitar in high school and began performing professionally at the age of 19. Perea, who is of Mescalero Apache and German-Irish descent, was raised in an American Indian community in the Bay Area.

“When I was a little kid, my mom and dad would take me to community pow-wow performances,” Perea said. “It was something that I identified very strongly with.”

Perea said he sees his music as a way of connecting to both his Native American and German-Irish roots.

“I don’t see it as just being American Indian music,” he said. “I just see it as [the music of] my mother and father.”

Among his list of musical influences, including John Coltrane and Jimmy Garrison, Perea especially reveres Native American saxophonist Jim Pepper. Perea said Pepper helped create “American Indian jazz fusion” and considers him to be an important figure in American music in general.

“He set the stage for people like me,” Perea said. “He was taking what people thought as traditional American Indian influences and brought them together [in] a jazz context.”

Currently, Perea said he is working on mixing pow-wow music with Reggae and African influences. He considers it a way of conserving traditional American Indian music while adding new tones to customary sounds. Perea said that playing his music is not just about preserving the Native American culture but is also about providing a space where the culture can grow beyond stereotypes or common misconceptions.

“I think a lot of people want to hold a culture to a certain set of images [and] to me, those images are kind of dangerous,” Perea said. “If you hold a culture to certain images, it’s dead, and it doesn’t grow.”

The musician said that his main job is to make people think. He acknowledges that his music can provide a gateway for much-needed conversations about Native American history and the current state of their culture.

“Those moments of dialogue, that’s the important thing,” Perea said. “[Those moments] help preserve an artistic space for American Indians to make art and for culture to be communicated through art.”