A MUSICIAN from York has completed an album more than 30 years after he started it.

Simon Webb completed his music degree at the University of York in 1977, and wrote and directed scores for York Theatre Royal, for everything from Shakespeare to Berwick Kaler's pantomimes.

In 1978, he travelled to the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee in South Dakota, to find out more about the Oglala Sioux Native Americans, who were living in near-poverty, with high unemployment, and ongoing tensions with the American Government.

Simon said: "I went in a very optimistic mood, and came back very depressed about what I saw.

"America was a vibrant country, compared to Britain, more forward looking and appealing, but when you go to Pine Ridge, it was like a third world in the middle of the first world. Everything was very run down, with massive unemployment, people very depressed, huge drug and alcohol problems, and an atmosphere of real menace."

Simon spoke to local residents and schoolchildren, and learned more about the music of the Sioux, and on his return to the UK began writing what would eventually become his album Everybody Powwow!

He said: "Events overtook me, and my career as musical director took off, with Tommy in the West End. I got six or seven songs but didn't feel like I had a full project. My wife had twins and I had to knuckle down to work, got contacted by Channel 4, then ITV, and for a while just had to put projects on the backburner.

"Powwow lay in a box, forgotten. When we moved out of London, we were deciding what to keep and get rid of and when I played Powwow, my wife said I should do something with it, so I spent the next year or so recording it. I then wrote for another winter and recorded the second half over 18 months, and it's finally finished."

Simon said he hopes the album - which tells the story of a Yorkshireman in Pine Ridge in the run-up to the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 - gets heard as widely as possible, and "helps shine a light on the situation at Pine Ridge now", and will donate a share of the profits to Native American charities.

Everybody Powwow will be released on June 15, and excerpts can be heard at simonwebbmusic.wordpress.com or by searching Facebook for PowWowTheAlbum.