The interior of an aqal (ah-kal), a traditional Somali home, recreated for the Somali Museum of Minnesota. An aqal is held together by ropes and tree branches and covered with kabad (hand-woven mats). Photograph by Nikki Tundel, 2016.
The Great Western Band of St. Paul, formed in 1860, was one of the earliest and most popular brass bands in Minnesota through the late nineteenth century. This group of amateur musicians helped to bring a measure of sophistication to early St. Paul as it played for a variety of civic and private events. The band was busy during the 1870s and 1880s, but toward the end of the century, it faded from view. A new version formed in 1977, and over the next ten years, St. Paul residents enjoyed some of the same band music that the city’s early residents had enjoyed a century earlier.
George Seibert, ca. 1886. Published in the April 26, 1886, edition of the St. Paul Daily Globe. Seibert led the Great Western Band of St. Paul from the mid-1860s to the mid-1890s. Public domain
Russell Munger. Published in St. Paul: The Queen City of the North-west (N.p.: Phoenix Publishing Company, 1890). Munger was the first leader of the Great Western Band of St. Paul. Public domain.
The Great Western Band, St. Paul, 1868. Pictured are, left to right, M. Esch, Joe Olrenshaw, H. Haub, C. Trowbridge, R. Schroer, William Bircher, H. Macklett, George Seibert, H. Herr, and Theodore Henninger.