Little Big Band will fill Meany Hall with its stories on native culture and funk-inspired music when its band members combine jazz, rock and blues with theatrical performance, poetry and the spoken word.

The band will be the feature of the Burke Museum’s concert event “Tribute to the Spirit,” which begins at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 20.

“Tribute to the Spirit,” the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific (A-Y-P) symposium and the Burke Museum’s current exhibit, A-Y-P: Indigenous Voices Reply, all correspond with the end of the 100th-year anniversary of the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition.

The Burke Museum, Simpson Center for the Humanities and the Bill Holm Center for the Study of Northwest Coast Art will also be presenting a one-day symposium on Saturday, Nov. 21 about the A-Y-P Exposition. The symposium will feature keynote speaker Dr. Robert Rydell, a World’s Fair historian.

Little Big Band is composed of artists who have diverse backgrounds in music, theater, visual arts and traditional Native American cultures.

With Grammy-Award-winning singer Star Nayea, electric bassist and Tlingit glass artist Preston Singletary, storyteller and musician Gene Tagaban, comic and violinist Swil Kanim, storyteller and percussionist James Luna and many others, this funk-inspired band blends all of these components into an energetic and soulful performance.

“Little Big Band is a collective reflection of the kaleidoscope of feelings from all the cultures that are involved,” Swil Kanim said. He added that every band member is a performer in his or her own right.

The band’s award-winning vocalist, Star Nayea, has a blues-soul-style voice that Singletary said is as powerful as his amplifier. James Luna, a visual and performance artist who has been featured at the Venice Biennale by the Smithsonian, challenges how people perceive Native Americans and how they perceive themselves.

Little Big Band’s members work together to create performances that draw the audience in while showing that they don’t have to give up who they are to do what they do, said Swil Kanim.

Friday’s concert event will be made up of a broad selection of different performances and theatrical skits that include poetry and the spoken word followed by the band’s set.

One of their songs, “Twenty-First Century Skinz,” incorporates all of the band members and is about “the old ways” and how native cultures change.

Although the song is about something serious — the way a competitive casino culture has developed within the tribal community — Swil Kanim believes that the funk-style music lightens the mood.

“The music is greater than the situation. And the fun is bigger than this; this is the joy of the Little Big Band … We may be small, but the music is really big,” said Swil Kanim.

The band began when Singletary and Tagaban got together to produce a soundtrack for a documentary at the Seattle Art Museum that was featuring Singletary’s glasswork.

Singletary, who had always loved funk music and was inspired by the syncopated rhythms of the likes of Scott Joplin and George Clinton, realized that there were no native-funk bands that he knew of.

“Funk embodies the very best of dance music, soul, gospel, rock and jazz; it’s very intellectual, it’s fun,” Singletary said. “It just makes you move. And really, what attracts me to music is that rhythmic syncopation that just makes you start moving your head.”

To the members of Little Big Band, music is an aural language.

“You play music, and it’s this organic thing that unfolds. That’s the exciting thing about music, performing and the spontaneity of [it], and the way you can convey [messages through it],” Singletary said. “And the audience can respond, and you can feed off how they’re feeling.”

Reach contributing writer Kat Chow at weekender@dailyuw.com.