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Rise Up! Indigenous Music in North America

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Music historian Craig Harris explores more than five hundred years of Indigenous history, religion, and cultural evolution in Rise Up!

Image courtesy of interviewee. December 6, 2023

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The transcript features a personal narrative by a musician who reflects on his life and deep passion for music, particularly hand percussion. He recounts early experiences in New York City, including a pivotal moment at a barbecue when he first played drums at the age of seven. The musician emphasizes the importance of pursuing one’s passion, citing his own journey through various musical instruments, lessons, and performances, including interactions with influential musicians from diverse genres. He discusses the significance of understanding music's historical and cultural contexts and shares experiences in writing about music, teaching, and engaging with indigenous music and its impact on American culture.

Throughout the narrative, he highlights the evolving landscape of indigenous music, with a resurgence facilitated by social media, enabling artists to reach audiences directly. The musician also reflects on broader themes like environmentalism, the interconnectedness of life, and the resilience of indigenous communities. He mentions writing books, contributing to radio shows, and the challenges he faced in publishing. The narrative concludes with recent events relevant to indigenous representation in music, including the release of a book titled "Rise Up," the premiere of a Martin Scorsese film, and controversy surrounding the identity of Buffy St. Marie, questioning her claimed indigenous heritage. Overall, the text combines personal anecdotes, insights on music and culture, and reflections on identity and activism.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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Many, many, many, many years.

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Um, I, I'm,

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I'm a musician, that's my heart.

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My ex-wife used to say, if I get cut,

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musical notes come out.

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And I've spent my whole life playing my instrument,

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which is, hand percussion.

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It goes way back to when I was seven years old.

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I grew up in New York City, in Queens in

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what they call row houses.

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They were attached houses,

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and that left an alleyway in between the two streets

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where the garages were.

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And it was a space

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where the kids would get together and play.

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Um, and once a year, there would be a barbecue.

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I got to the barbecue at the age of seven.

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I was early, and the drummer was just setting up

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and handed me the sticks and said, go ahead, kid.

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And I sat down

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and I consider that the second time that I was born.

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A couple months later, my dad took me into a music store

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and said, you are old enough to get lessons.

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What instrument would you like?

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And when I said drums, he yanked me out of there as quick

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as he, as he brought me in there.

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I don't, I don't think many parents would like

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to have a drummer sitting in their basement banging away,

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and I can understand that.

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Um, but

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there's an interesting thing.

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Passion is what's guided me my whole life and passion.

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A good example of that.

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Well, I wound up taking that drum lessons,

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but guitar lessons for a year.

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And here's the difference. Here's where passion comes in.

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At the same time, I can remember my mom getting on my case.

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You have a music lesson on Friday. Go practice, go practice.

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Go practice, go practice.

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It was reading outta my ears

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and into my fingers at the same time.

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I bought a pair of drumsticks.

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I took an old lamp, I took a chair,

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and I made my first drum set.

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And I've always played rather than practice.

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It's always come from a different place.

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Uh, that, that's the key to any success,

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is if you are lucky to find what passion can guide you,

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whether it be plumbing or, or electricity or playing music

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or whatever you find that passion is,

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is a godsend.

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The next thing that is important

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happened to me when I was maybe a little bit older,

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but not much older.

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We were at the circus, the old Ringland,

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the old Madison Square Garden.

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It was uptown Manhattan,

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and it wasn't the round building

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that's been there since the seventies,

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but a conventional theater style square building.

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And I remember seeing, the Ringland Brothers and Barnum

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and Bailey Circus, and there was a troop of clown acrobats.

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And my mom turned to me

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and said, you know, to be a good clown acrobat, you have

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to be a great acrobat first.

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And I didn't get it at that young age,

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but it sounded like something that made sense.

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So it just stayed in my mind until I figured out,

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what it meant.

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And that meant that if I wanted to play,

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I had to have knowledge behind it.

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If I wanted to play music, I had to know about music.

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I had to know not just about the music that me

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and my friends listened to, but the entire history.

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Going back to the cave people,

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how did it evolve, what it's meant?

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Um, and fortunately, I've been very fortunate in my life,

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the same muses that gave me the ability,

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well, before I, I explained that.

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Let me just explain how I came to the hand drum,

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because it's another example of passion.

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When I was in the seventh grade, the Nigerian drummer,

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Baba Tunde Ji was in Manhattan,

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and he was trying to raise money.

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He, he was the first African musician

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to record an album in the United States,

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an album called Drums of Passion.

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In 1959, a big influence, Santana,

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when that album came out 50 years later, remarked

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that if you take away the electric instruments from Santana,

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you left with Tunji.

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And they were trying, he was trying to raise money

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for African American cultural center in Manhattan.

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And the way that they raised money was they went to schools

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and played with his drummers and his dancers.

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So I'm sitting there in the seventh grade

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and his dancers are playing, and his drummers are playing.

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And I knew instantly from somewhere way beyond myself

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that I understood those rhythms.

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That was the third time I was born.

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I later became friends with Tji

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and spent a little time with him

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before he passed away, probably about 15 or 20 years ago.

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Um, the same Gods that allowed me to

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Have make magic on a animal, skin on a, on a drum frame,

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allowed me the brains to be able to track down musicians

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of all genres.

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And since 1971, I've been writing about music.

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Every couple days I've been able

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to interview another musician, another

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take another class with the masters.

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And that's been going on, like I said, since 1971.

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I don't draw lines in music.

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Music is a rainbow,

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and I don't understand why we don't embrace

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and love all the different views and shades.

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Instead of just saying, I listen to just the purples and,

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and that, and lose the joy

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of listening to everything else.

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Louis Armstrong used to say, there's good music

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and there's bad music.

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Now, how I wrote this book is one

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of my favorite games recently.

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I, I've learned how, how to voice this.

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Um, one my favorite games is called

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Put up as in put up or shut up.

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And I'm often in a position where I have

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to do something.

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I have to succeed at something

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because I put myself into the thick of it.

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For example, I agreed five years ago

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to do a weekly radio show for Bluegrass Country Radio

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out Washington, DC Every Friday night,

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my show is on from 10 to one,

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and I spend three hours digging into the catalog

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of a single artist or a theme.

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Um, this month I'm doing four weeks

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of indigenous music.

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Um, after that I'm doing a couple weeks

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of the Child Balance.

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Uh, it's take, I've done it through the alphabet.

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It's taken me five years to get to the letter Z.

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And after the new year, we'll be going back to letter A

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and starting all over again.

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And it really lets me to dig into things

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and hear things that aren't usually heard.

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And, and, so I, I have

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that radio show and I've had all these articles.

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And when it comes to books, I've been fortunate

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because other writers that I know tell me

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how much trouble they have finding

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a publisher for what they write.

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They go to conferences, they, they knock on doors.

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I've never had trouble from the very first time I wrote,

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first book I wrote was back in 1991,

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entitled The New Folk Music.

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I didn't know what I was gonna write until a month

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before I wrote it.

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Um, I thought I had until the end of the year to write it,

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and it was going through my head trying

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to figure out what to do with it.

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And I learned that when they talk about the end

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of the year, they're actually talking about the end

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of the fiscal year, which is July and not December.

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And so fortunately, I had a dream

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and read the book, my book cover to cover in the Dream,

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and sat down and just dashed it out.

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And it wound up not selling a lot of copies,

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but being very influential

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and leading to a lot of things that have rippled out of it.

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It was called The New Folk Music then.

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Then I spent many a year not writing books,

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but articles for magazines

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and newspapers, including the Boston Globe, the

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Time Magazine, Christian Science Monitor,

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the Associated Press on, on, and on and on.

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At one time when newspapers were functioning,

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there were 28 newspapers in the Massachusetts area,

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covering my writings on a weekly basis.

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Um, I was also teaching full-time in the school system.

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There are 574 recognized tribes in the

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United States and several hundred tribes

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that are not recognized.

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Rather than being an anthropologist.

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In my writing and research, I come from a music sense

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and I treat people as their individuals.

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So in the book, they, it's their individual stories

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rather than trying to collectively make points.

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Um, the easy answer is indigenous

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music is performed and played by indigenous people.

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That that's the simple answer.

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When I was writing my first book about indigenous music,

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heartbeat War, and the Electric Powwow,

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my publisher was constantly asking me that question,

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what is it that makes it indigenous?

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Is it just because it's indigenous people making this music?

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What connects the, the songs of Joanne Shenandoah

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to the powwow ceremonial music of Northern Cree,

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or the Round Dance Music of Foreign of Bear Fox

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or the Hip hop of, of Night of Night Shield, or Lightfoot,

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or the reggae of Casper, yes, for,

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or the politically charged, poetry accompanied by music

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of John Trudell or the, electronica

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of the hallucination who used

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to be called a tribe called Red.

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Um, and I racked my brain trying

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to find a connection.

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And it wasn't until I read a book

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about indigenous

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Native American mythology.

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And in the final chapter, it, it talks about,

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and it makes a generalization, and,

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and I've so far have found that generalization

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to be dead on, correct

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indigenous people understand that life

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and existence on this planet is a circle.

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Human beings aren't here to destroy the environment

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and pay, pay disrespect to the elders.

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They, they believe that you protect the environment

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because that's what it's all about.

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The water, the mountains, the sky,

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they understand the connectedness to human beings.

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The human beings aren't.

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The great eagle trip is that we think that we are

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to dominate all this, to put the animals into extinction,

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to, Indians, for the most part believe

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in creating a world, not for today,

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but they're thinking seven generations from today.

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Um, I, I think about,

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I was at the Philadelphia Folk Festival on the Sunday

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of the great h New Orleans hurricane a few years back.

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And we were in the hotel room

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and hanging out bunch of our, my friends after the show.

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And we were watching in silence, the hurricane coming in,

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and there was a troop of Native American, performers.

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And one of them turned to me

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and said, you know, we've been saying this is gonna

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happen for a long time.

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That that's what it is.

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It's about resilience,

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it's about understanding history,

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but not being destroyed by history.

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Um, getting, getting back to the put up or, or shut up.

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All, all of my books are, are, were suggested

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to me by publishers.

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And in, in this particular case, in the case of Rise Up,

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I was had, back in January of 2020,

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I had to go down to San Antonio, Texas.

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I was working on a book called Crossing Borders,

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which is the memoir of Max,

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a bajo sexto player from San Antonio, who's the leader

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of a Grammy winning Tex-Mex fan called Los Tex Maniacs.

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And he also performs in records

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with the Great Flock of Jimenez.

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But I went down there, I was feeling kind of sick

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carnival like I had the flu, but I,

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but I didn't know what I had.

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We sat around his house just talking

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and binging on the Mexican American

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Cartel TV program about,

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Narcos, I think it was.

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It was, we, we, we didn't do anything.

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Um, and I flew back.

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February 15th was the deadline of my book.

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February 14th, I finished it, and as soon as I hit enter

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and sent it to the publisher, all hell broke loose.

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My email went ballistic, my telephone went crazy.

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Every gig I had at, at libraries

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and schools was either postponed

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or converted to Zoom programs.

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Now, I, I, I, one of the things that I do musically,

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I, I perform

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each Monday I'm in the recording studio

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with a band called the Gaia Star Band.

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We record an hour of original music,

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which is mixed down like it was a recording

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and then syndicated all around the world

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by Dream Vision seven Radio Network in Boston.

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And we, we've, this past week, we did show 546.

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So that's over 10 years of these recording.

16:39.605 --> 16:43.505
But, and I, I, I'm often when I'm not, I don't have gigs.

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I go to the open mics

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and play with everybody the whole night and,

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and I just love to play.

16:51.155 --> 16:52.295
Um, and,

16:52.355 --> 16:55.255
and when I'm not actually playing,

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I don't sit around and practice.

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That's when I'm listening music or doing research

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or doing interviews or writing or doing photo photography

17:04.195 --> 17:07.415
or working on my radio show, all the other things.

17:08.315 --> 17:13.285
So I, I wasn't playing, I wasn't doing anything

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but climbing up the walls.

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The first time I went back to playing, my calluses were gone

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and it hurt to play.

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Uh, they came back pretty quickly, but I remember that pain

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and I was talking to a publisher

17:29.025 --> 17:31.285
and he said, why don't you write another book about

17:31.345 --> 17:32.685
Native American music?

17:34.545 --> 17:37.085
Now, when I wrote the first one, heartbeat, warble

17:37.085 --> 17:39.245
and the Electric Powwow, when I finished that book,

17:39.585 --> 17:41.845
things were looking really drastic.

17:43.705 --> 17:47.845
Um, my, my, my introduction

17:47.905 --> 17:49.965
to the subject subject, even though

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I pride myself on knowing a lot about a lot

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of different kinds of music, about 25 years ago,

17:58.295 --> 18:01.575
I was writing for International World Music

18:01.875 --> 18:04.535
and Folk Music magazine called Dirty Linen,

18:04.865 --> 18:07.575
which is no longer, printed.

18:09.555 --> 18:12.055
And it was just when CDs had just come out

18:12.195 --> 18:17.075
and I was handed a pile of CD drum group, powwow drum group

18:17.935 --> 18:22.075
CDs, and even with all that knowledge, I had

18:22.075 --> 18:25.915
to listen over and over and over and over for a month

18:26.415 --> 18:30.035
before I could write anything other than the hitting single

18:30.325 --> 18:31.915
chord notes on a drum

18:32.615 --> 18:35.035
and singing in a language that I don't understand.

18:35.965 --> 18:39.465
And sometimes they don't even sing in, in, in any kind

18:39.465 --> 18:42.345
of language, which I've learned is called vocals.

18:43.535 --> 18:46.245
Well, that

18:46.735 --> 18:49.725
after a month, the subtleties started coming out.

18:50.395 --> 18:53.645
Some sang in a high pitch, some in a low pitch.

18:54.155 --> 18:56.925
Some used the big ceremonial powwow drum.

18:57.305 --> 19:01.725
So some used the small handheld round dance drum.

19:02.355 --> 19:06.565
Some had English incorporated into their lyrics.

19:07.195 --> 19:10.245
Some had women singing, some were all women.

19:10.965 --> 19:12.525
I mean, they were all different.

19:12.905 --> 19:15.525
And I did an article about powwow drum groups.

19:16.025 --> 19:20.445
And as I was doing that, I realized how much I had fallen

19:20.545 --> 19:21.685
for the stereotype,

19:21.995 --> 19:26.605
because indigenous music wasn't just about pow ow,

19:26.735 --> 19:29.645
drums and flutes.

19:29.795 --> 19:33.125
It's at the very heart of what makes America's music,

19:33.595 --> 19:38.225
America's music, everything that you call American,

19:38.725 --> 19:43.665
and even the British stuff that came was influenced by,

19:44.805 --> 19:46.705
by it, there's on the two

19:46.805 --> 19:49.585
and the four beat on the back beat, there's a chop

19:50.375 --> 19:51.745
that doesn't come from Africa.

19:51.845 --> 19:55.865
That's not a, that didn't come from the arrangements

19:55.885 --> 19:58.305
and orchestration from Europe that came

19:58.305 --> 20:01.945
because late at night, you could hear those pow wow drums

20:01.965 --> 20:04.305
for miles around, and it was part

20:04.305 --> 20:05.825
of the whole consciousness.

20:06.535 --> 20:10.465
Then you bring in to play all the people that had direct

20:11.095 --> 20:15.545
influence on music, who were indigenous in the blues,

20:15.675 --> 20:19.345
Leroy car, scrapper Blackwell, Eddie Clare,

20:19.475 --> 20:21.665
Eddie the Chief Clearwater, used

20:21.665 --> 20:24.505
to perform sometimes in the Indian headdress.

20:24.935 --> 20:28.345
There's Luther Guitar, John Johnson has Indian blood,

20:28.775 --> 20:32.705
Jimi Hendrix, Hank Williams, Ronnie Spector,

20:33.725 --> 20:36.865
the first woman to sing with a big band, jazz band.

20:37.055 --> 20:41.265
Mildred Bailey was Indian Illinois Jette,

20:41.325 --> 20:44.185
who played on what might be the first rock

20:44.185 --> 20:45.745
and roll record flying home

20:46.255 --> 20:48.845
with the Lionel Hampton Band was indigenous.

20:49.835 --> 20:51.605
It's been there from the very part

20:51.905 --> 20:53.765
and not gotten credit for it.

20:55.045 --> 20:58.785
But I, so I agreed to write this second book,

21:01.015 --> 21:03.035
and I didn't want to write the same book twice.

21:04.485 --> 21:07.785
So I just made a list of only the people

21:07.925 --> 21:11.785
who had won the indigenous awards or the Grammy

21:12.085 --> 21:16.615
or the Juno Awards since my last book about indigenous

21:16.785 --> 21:20.495
music copy War on the Electric Powwow was published.

21:21.895 --> 21:26.095
And it put out the word that I wanted to do interviews,

21:26.835 --> 21:31.175
and everybody was in the same place not wanting,

21:31.595 --> 21:36.375
really wanting to talk, and they were so open and available,

21:37.275 --> 21:39.815
and it, I had always wanted to write,

21:40.205 --> 21:43.975
have my interviews come out as first person narratives.

21:45.075 --> 21:49.135
And in this particular case, I had no right to belong in,

21:49.275 --> 21:53.615
in there as the author making the ego sentence

21:53.715 --> 21:57.735
and backing it up with a quote, these are not my sentiments.

21:57.925 --> 21:59.935
This is what I'm learning from these people.

22:00.655 --> 22:02.815
I couldn't do it with previous books.

22:02.995 --> 22:07.135
And I tried, I tried doing it with Bluegrass Newgrass,

22:07.135 --> 22:08.815
old time in Americana music,

22:09.315 --> 22:12.055
and went back to the traditional way of writing,

22:12.945 --> 22:16.125
but writing the book with Max Barker, which was a memoir.

22:16.825 --> 22:19.405
Let me open up to that style of writing.

22:20.025 --> 22:24.405
So I wound up with 48 first person narratives

22:24.405 --> 22:26.885
that only dis not only discuss music,

22:27.305 --> 22:29.245
but discussed everything that you wanted

22:29.245 --> 22:32.645
to know about Native Americans, the spirituality,

22:32.785 --> 22:35.605
the religion, the beliefs, the day-to-Day life,

22:36.225 --> 22:40.685
the stereotyping, the they got into everything.

22:42.025 --> 22:44.845
And no publisher wanted to touch it

22:45.035 --> 22:48.005
because it was a great fan scene about the people

22:48.065 --> 22:49.485
who are on the scene today.

22:49.865 --> 22:51.605
And if you weren't into that scene,

22:51.625 --> 22:53.965
you weren't gonna pay attention to that book.

22:54.425 --> 22:58.685
And I went back and did three years of heavy duty research.

22:59.305 --> 23:02.285
So it was a combination of heavy duty research,

23:02.785 --> 23:06.685
and I dug deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper,

23:07.225 --> 23:11.325
and finally hit ground zero, which is the doctrine

23:11.325 --> 23:15.335
of discovery and had nothing to do with music,

23:16.115 --> 23:17.875
but it's still on the books.

23:18.255 --> 23:23.035
In, in the United States, back

23:23.895 --> 23:28.555
two decades before Columbus, the Pope set off the first

23:28.655 --> 23:32.115
of a number of decrees that said, any land

23:32.145 --> 23:33.435
that wasn't possessed

23:33.435 --> 23:36.475
by Christian people was rife for colonization.

23:36.855 --> 23:41.825
And if the people there was, we,

23:42.455 --> 23:45.885
refused to convert, they were

23:46.505 --> 23:48.765
become slaves and even put to death.

23:49.525 --> 23:52.255
That led to all the assimilation that's led

23:52.275 --> 23:55.215
to Jefferson Monroe, the Madison Doctrine.

23:55.845 --> 23:58.695
It's all been part of this, stemming from there,

23:59.085 --> 24:00.455
that doctrine of discovery.

24:02.285 --> 24:05.535
Some Christian denominations have acknowledged it

24:05.675 --> 24:10.455
and apologized last year, last summer, not this past summer,

24:10.515 --> 24:13.975
but a few summers ago, Pope Francis made a pilgrimage

24:14.035 --> 24:18.415
to Canada and came, went to First Nations, apologized

24:18.435 --> 24:21.615
for the Roman Catholic involvement in the boarding schools

24:23.795 --> 24:25.315
at one of the big masses.

24:26.455 --> 24:30.985
A big, a big banner was unfolded that said,

24:32.155 --> 24:33.475
repeal the doctrine.

24:34.355 --> 24:39.085
This past summer, the Pope finally officially acknowledged

24:39.305 --> 24:40.685
the existence of this.

24:41.025 --> 24:45.805
He didn't go so far as to ell it, but it, it's a first step,

24:46.345 --> 24:48.645
but it's taken a long time.

24:49.275 --> 24:51.685
It's still on the constitutional books.

24:52.505 --> 24:57.125
In 2005, Ruth Baden Ginsburg, who was the great

24:57.765 --> 25:02.165
progressive Supreme Court court judge, used it

25:02.625 --> 25:06.285
as the reason why she denied the JO people,

25:06.455 --> 25:07.885
their land back.

25:09.725 --> 25:12.335
That it's been at the core of everything.

25:13.305 --> 25:17.125
So even though I, I started it in music, in order

25:17.125 --> 25:18.605
to understand the music

25:19.065 --> 25:21.765
and what it all means, you have

25:21.765 --> 25:24.445
to dig into all these little side groups

25:24.835 --> 25:29.125
because it all influence who these people are,

25:29.465 --> 25:31.565
and what they become and what they believe.

25:32.185 --> 25:35.445
And what I found in writing this book is

25:35.445 --> 25:39.285
that great things have happened in the past 10 years since

25:39.995 --> 25:42.845
Heartbeat War, when the electric pow have come out.

25:43.875 --> 25:46.325
When Heartbeat was published,

25:46.875 --> 25:48.365
some things were starting to happen.

25:48.645 --> 25:49.805
A tribe called Red

25:50.345 --> 25:54.705
and Electronica Group from Ottawa came out using

25:55.445 --> 25:58.825
pow wow drum recordings as the basis of electronic

25:58.885 --> 25:59.945
and dance music.

26:00.795 --> 26:04.455
And it's become brought the whole powwow up to date.

26:05.815 --> 26:10.215
W at the time that heartbeat came out, a lot of things had

26:10.995 --> 26:12.015
had disappeared.

26:12.275 --> 26:14.015
The whole Kevin Kassner Dancing

26:14.015 --> 26:16.895
with Wolves phenomenal, had dissipated.

26:17.595 --> 26:21.895
The Native American, politics were kind of at a lull.

26:22.885 --> 26:26.065
Um, artists could not get played on the radio.

26:26.935 --> 26:30.585
They could not be seen on TV in an appropriate,

26:31.135 --> 26:32.545
realistic kind of way.

26:33.645 --> 26:34.945
It just wasn't happening.

26:35.885 --> 26:38.065
And nobody was, everybody was in trouble.

26:38.085 --> 26:39.145
Record companies

26:39.145 --> 26:42.225
that put out indigenous music were either folding

26:42.645 --> 26:47.365
or relying on their back catalogs nobody was creating.

26:48.155 --> 26:51.685
Even Canyon was going through Changes Canyon,

26:51.775 --> 26:53.445
which was on top of the world,

26:53.815 --> 26:57.445
being sold in department stores at one time, all Carlos

26:57.965 --> 27:00.165
aka sold millions of copies of records.

27:01.275 --> 27:02.855
It, it was gone.

27:04.035 --> 27:05.415
And now coming back

27:05.435 --> 27:09.775
and revisiting this music, I found

27:10.325 --> 27:14.975
that there was a great re rebirthing,

27:15.845 --> 27:19.675
there was a great renaissance because of social media.

27:21.005 --> 27:25.135
They can get their message directly across to the people

27:25.315 --> 27:26.735
who wanna listen to it

27:27.155 --> 27:30.175
and not even worry about that mainstream.

27:31.065 --> 27:33.935
There are avenues for their music to be heard.

27:34.265 --> 27:36.335
There are people who are listening to it,

27:36.715 --> 27:39.175
and they don't care if the WashU

27:39.595 --> 27:43.655
or the white people even here, I mean, they would love to,

27:43.835 --> 27:47.375
to be great stars and reach that success.

27:48.195 --> 27:49.735
But great things are happening.

27:49.955 --> 27:54.215
The political movements are, are really strong, great

27:55.265 --> 27:57.985
organization organizing has been done.

27:58.965 --> 28:02.865
And in the past week, three things happened

28:04.595 --> 28:05.805
that have relevance.

28:06.945 --> 28:11.245
The first on November 1st was the publication of Rise Up.

28:12.095 --> 28:14.155
And I, and I recommend everybody read it

28:14.155 --> 28:18.785
because I've been working with my cousin Terry Katz, who

28:19.805 --> 28:21.385
two years ago won the,

28:21.805 --> 28:24.625
New York Film Festival best documentary

28:25.255 --> 28:30.105
film award on a film doc, on a film series

28:30.245 --> 28:35.105
of series of six documentaries based on Rise Up.

28:35.975 --> 28:39.635
So it gets into all the political and the music and it,

28:39.655 --> 28:41.955
and the social and everything else.

28:43.045 --> 28:47.965
Um, also they premiered

28:48.065 --> 28:51.445
was the film, the Martin Scorsese Film Killers

28:51.505 --> 28:54.525
of the Flower Moon, with a,

28:56.095 --> 28:58.365
soundtrack done by Robbie Robinson

28:58.365 --> 29:00.365
who passed away August 9th.

29:01.105 --> 29:04.565
And right before I wrote Heartbeat, warble

29:04.565 --> 29:05.685
and The Electric Pow Wow.

29:06.085 --> 29:08.325
I wrote my first book about the band.

29:08.985 --> 29:13.205
So that film had special meanings for me.

29:13.905 --> 29:17.405
And, and the third thing, it isn't a pleasant thing.

29:17.995 --> 29:21.515
It's, it sort of, sort of makes me sick.

29:22.415 --> 29:25.355
And that's the outing of Buffy St.

29:25.355 --> 29:29.695
Marie as not being indigenous, A Canadian, a Canadian

29:30.635 --> 29:33.855
TV documentary series, did their homework

29:34.675 --> 29:36.815
and found her birth certificate.

29:37.395 --> 29:41.285
And she actually is full, full-blooded Italian,

29:42.075 --> 29:45.695
born in, in just north of Boston.

29:47.105 --> 29:49.685
And the whole thing is a, is a shame

29:49.685 --> 29:51.685
because he was the queen.

29:52.345 --> 29:55.125
And it sort of throws everything into turmoil.

29:55.595 --> 29:57.365
It's as though we found out

29:57.365 --> 29:59.205
that the Beatles came from New Jersey.

30:01.545 --> 30:04.165
It just does not make any sense.

00:00 - Many, many, many, many years. I, I'm, I'm a musician, that's my heart. My ex-wife used to say, if I get cut, musical notes come out. And I've spent my whole life playing my instrument,

00:20 - which is, hand percussion. It goes way back to when I was seven years old. I grew up in New York City, in Queens in what they call row houses. They were attached houses, and that left an alleyway in between the two streets where the garages were. And it was a space where the kids would get together and play. and once a year, there would be a barbecue.

00:52 - I got to the barbecue at the age of seven. I was early, and the drummer was just setting up and handed me the sticks and said, go ahead, kid. And I sat down and I consider that the second time that I was born. A couple months later, my dad took me into a music store and said, you are old enough to get lessons. What instrument would you like? And when I said drums, he yanked me out of there as quick as he, as he brought me in there.

01:29 - I don't, I don't think many parents would like to have a drummer sitting in their basement banging away, and I can understand that. but there's an interesting thing. Passion is what's guided me my whole life and passion. A good example of that. Well, I wound up taking that drum lessons, but guitar lessons for a year. And here's the difference. Here's where passion comes in.

02:01 - At the same time, I can remember my mom getting on my case. You have a music lesson on Friday. Go practice, go practice. Go practice, go practice. It was reading outta my ears and into my fingers at the same time. I bought a pair of drumsticks. I took an old lamp, I took a chair, and I made my first drum set. And I've always played rather than practice. It's always come from a different place.

02:31 - that, that's the key to any success, is if you are lucky to find what passion can guide you, whether it be plumbing or, or electricity or playing music or whatever you find that passion is, is a godsend. The next thing that is important happened to me when I was maybe a little bit older, but not much older. We were at the circus, the old Ringland, the old Madison Square Garden.

03:08 - It was uptown Manhattan, and it wasn't the round building that's been there since the seventies, but a conventional theater style square building. And I remember seeing, the Ringland Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, and there was a troop of clown acrobats. And my mom turned to me and said, you know, to be a good clown acrobat, you have to be a great acrobat first. And I didn't get it at that young age,

03:42 - but it sounded like something that made sense. So it just stayed in my mind until I figured out, what it meant. And that meant that if I wanted to play, I had to have knowledge behind it. If I wanted to play music, I had to know about music. I had to know not just about the music that me and my friends listened to, but the entire history. Going back to the cave people, how did it evolve, what it's meant?

04:15 - and fortunately, I've been very fortunate in my life, the same muses that gave me the ability, well, before I, I explained that. Let me just explain how I came to the hand drum, because it's another example of passion. When I was in the seventh grade, the Nigerian drummer, Baba Tunde Ji was in Manhattan, and he was trying to raise money. He, he was the first African musician to record an album in the United States,

04:51 - an album called Drums of Passion. In 1959, a big influence, Santana, when that album came out 50 years later, remarked that if you take away the electric instruments from Santana, you left with Tunji. And they were trying, he was trying to raise money for African American cultural center in Manhattan. And the way that they raised money was they went to schools and played with his drummers and his dancers. So I'm sitting there in the seventh grade

05:27 - and his dancers are playing, and his drummers are playing. And I knew instantly from somewhere way beyond myself that I understood those rhythms. That was the third time I was born. I later became friends with Tji and spent a little time with him before he passed away, probably about 15 or 20 years ago. the same Gods that allowed me to Have make magic on a animal, skin on a, on a drum frame, allowed me the brains to be able to track down musicians

06:09 - of all genres. And since 1971, I've been writing about music. Every couple days I've been able to interview another musician, another take another class with the masters. And that's been going on, like I said, since 1971. I don't draw lines in music. Music is a rainbow, and I don't understand why we don't embrace and love all the different views and shades.

06:41 - Instead of just saying, I listen to just the purples and, and that, and lose the joy of listening to everything else. Louis Armstrong used to say, there's good music and there's bad music. Now, how I wrote this book is one of my favorite games recently. I, I've learned how, how to voice this. one my favorite games is called Put up as in put up or shut up.

07:18 - And I'm often in a position where I have to do something. I have to succeed at something because I put myself into the thick of it. For example, I agreed five years ago to do a weekly radio show for Bluegrass Country Radio out Washington, DC Every Friday night, my show is on from 10 to one, and I spend three hours digging into the catalog of a single artist or a theme.

07:53 - this month I'm doing four weeks of indigenous music. after that I'm doing a couple weeks of the Child Balance. it's take, I've done it through the alphabet. It's taken me five years to get to the letter Z. And after the new year, we'll be going back to letter A and starting all over again. And it really lets me to dig into things and hear things that aren't usually heard.

08:22 - And, and, so I, I have that radio show and I've had all these articles. And when it comes to books, I've been fortunate because other writers that I know tell me how much trouble they have finding a publisher for what they write. They go to conferences, they, they knock on doors. I've never had trouble from the very first time I wrote, first book I wrote was back in 1991, entitled The New Folk Music.

09:00 - I didn't know what I was gonna write until a month before I wrote it. I thought I had until the end of the year to write it, and it was going through my head trying to figure out what to do with it. And I learned that when they talk about the end of the year, they're actually talking about the end of the fiscal year, which is July and not December. And so fortunately, I had a dream and read the book, my book cover to cover in the Dream,

09:34 - and sat down and just dashed it out. And it wound up not selling a lot of copies, but being very influential and leading to a lot of things that have rippled out of it. It was called The New Folk Music then. Then I spent many a year not writing books, but articles for magazines and newspapers, including the Boston Globe, the Time Magazine, Christian Science Monitor, the Associated Press on, on, and on and on.

10:06 - At one time when newspapers were functioning, there were 28 newspapers in the Massachusetts area, covering my writings on a weekly basis. I was also teaching full-time in the school system. There are 574 recognized tribes in the United States and several hundred tribes that are not recognized. Rather than being an anthropologist. In my writing and research, I come from a music sense and I treat people as their individuals.

10:43 - So in the book, they, it's their individual stories rather than trying to collectively make points. the easy answer is indigenous music is performed and played by indigenous people. That that's the simple answer. When I was writing my first book about indigenous music, heartbeat War, and the Electric Powwow, my publisher was constantly asking me that question, what is it that makes it indigenous? Is it just because it's indigenous people making this music?

11:23 - What connects the, the songs of Joanne Shenandoah to the powwow ceremonial music of Northern Cree, or the Round Dance Music of Foreign of Bear Fox or the Hip hop of, of Night of Night Shield, or Lightfoot, or the reggae of Casper, yes, for, or the politically charged, poetry accompanied by music of John Trudell or the, electronica of the hallucination who used to be called a tribe called Red. and I racked my brain trying

12:05 - to find a connection. And it wasn't until I read a book about indigenous Native American mythology. And in the final chapter, it, it talks about, and it makes a generalization, and, and I've so far have found that generalization to be dead on, correct indigenous people understand that life and existence on this planet is a circle.

12:40 - Human beings aren't here to destroy the environment and pay, pay disrespect to the elders. They, they believe that you protect the environment because that's what it's all about. The water, the mountains, the sky, they understand the connectedness to human beings. The human beings aren't. The great eagle trip is that we think that we are to dominate all this, to put the animals into extinction, to, Indians, for the most part believe

13:19 - in creating a world, not for today, but they're thinking seven generations from today. I, I think about, I was at the Philadelphia Folk Festival on the Sunday of the great h New Orleans hurricane a few years back. And we were in the hotel room and hanging out bunch of our, my friends after the show. And we were watching in silence, the hurricane coming in, and there was a troop of Native American, performers. And one of them turned to me

14:01 - and said, you know, we've been saying this is gonna happen for a long time. That that's what it is. It's about resilience, it's about understanding history, but not being destroyed by history. getting, getting back to the put up or, or shut up. All, all of my books are, are, were suggested to me by publishers. And in, in this particular case, in the case of Rise Up,

14:34 - I was had, back in January of 2020, I had to go down to San Antonio, Texas. I was working on a book called Crossing Borders, which is the memoir of Max, a bajo sexto player from San Antonio, who's the leader of a Grammy winning Tex-Mex fan called Los Tex Maniacs. And he also performs in records with the Great Flock of Jimenez. But I went down there, I was feeling kind of sick carnival like I had the flu, but I,

15:12 - but I didn't know what I had. We sat around his house just talking and binging on the Mexican American Cartel TV program about, Narcos, I think it was. It was, we, we, we didn't do anything. and I flew back. February 15th was the deadline of my book. February 14th, I finished it, and as soon as I hit enter and sent it to the publisher, all hell broke loose.

15:50 - My email went ballistic, my telephone went crazy. Every gig I had at, at libraries and schools was either postponed or converted to Zoom programs. Now, I, I, I, one of the things that I do musically, I, I perform each Monday I'm in the recording studio with a band called the Gaia Star Band. We record an hour of original music, which is mixed down like it was a recording

16:23 - and then syndicated all around the world by Dream Vision seven Radio Network in Boston. And we, we've, this past week, we did show 546. So that's over 10 years of these recording. But, and I, I, I'm often when I'm not, I don't have gigs. I go to the open mics and play with everybody the whole night and, and I just love to play. and, and when I'm not actually playing,

16:55 - I don't sit around and practice. That's when I'm listening music or doing research or doing interviews or writing or doing photo photography or working on my radio show, all the other things. So I, I wasn't playing, I wasn't doing anything but climbing up the walls. The first time I went back to playing, my calluses were gone and it hurt to play. they came back pretty quickly, but I remember that pain and I was talking to a publisher

17:29 - and he said, why don't you write another book about Native American music? Now, when I wrote the first one, heartbeat, warble and the Electric Powwow, when I finished that book, things were looking really drastic. my, my, my introduction to the subject subject, even though I pride myself on knowing a lot about a lot of different kinds of music, about 25 years ago, I was writing for International World Music

18:01 - and Folk Music magazine called Dirty Linen, which is no longer, printed. And it was just when CDs had just come out and I was handed a pile of CD drum group, powwow drum group CDs, and even with all that knowledge, I had to listen over and over and over and over for a month before I could write anything other than the hitting single chord notes on a drum and singing in a language that I don't understand. And sometimes they don't even sing in, in, in any kind

18:39 - of language, which I've learned is called vocals. Well, that after a month, the subtleties started coming out. Some sang in a high pitch, some in a low pitch. Some used the big ceremonial powwow drum. So some used the small handheld round dance drum. Some had English incorporated into their lyrics. Some had women singing, some were all women. I mean, they were all different. And I did an article about powwow drum groups.

19:16 - And as I was doing that, I realized how much I had fallen for the stereotype, because indigenous music wasn't just about pow ow, drums and flutes. It's at the very heart of what makes America's music, America's music, everything that you call American, and even the British stuff that came was influenced by, by it, there's on the two and the four beat on the back beat, there's a chop that doesn't come from Africa.

19:51 - That's not a, that didn't come from the arrangements and orchestration from Europe that came because late at night, you could hear those pow wow drums for miles around, and it was part of the whole consciousness. Then you bring in to play all the people that had direct influence on music, who were indigenous in the blues, Leroy car, scrapper Blackwell, Eddie Clare, Eddie the Chief Clearwater, used to perform sometimes in the Indian headdress.

20:24 - There's Luther Guitar, John Johnson has Indian blood, Jimi Hendrix, Hank Williams, Ronnie Spector, the first woman to sing with a big band, jazz band. Mildred Bailey was Indian Illinois Jette, who played on what might be the first rock and roll record flying home with the Lionel Hampton Band was indigenous. It's been there from the very part and not gotten credit for it. But I, so I agreed to write this second book,

21:01 - and I didn't want to write the same book twice. So I just made a list of only the people who had won the indigenous awards or the Grammy or the Juno Awards since my last book about indigenous music copy War on the Electric Powwow was published. And it put out the word that I wanted to do interviews, and everybody was in the same place not wanting, really wanting to talk, and they were so open and available, and it, I had always wanted to write, have my interviews come out as first person narratives.

21:45 - And in this particular case, I had no right to belong in, in there as the author making the ego sentence and backing it up with a quote, these are not my sentiments. This is what I'm learning from these people. I couldn't do it with previous books. And I tried, I tried doing it with Bluegrass Newgrass, old time in Americana music, and went back to the traditional way of writing, but writing the book with Max Barker, which was a memoir. Let me open up to that style of writing.

22:20 - So I wound up with 48 first person narratives that only dis not only discuss music, but discussed everything that you wanted to know about Native Americans, the spirituality, the religion, the beliefs, the day-to-Day life, the stereotyping, the they got into everything. And no publisher wanted to touch it because it was a great fan scene about the people who are on the scene today. And if you weren't into that scene,

22:51 - you weren't gonna pay attention to that book. And I went back and did three years of heavy duty research. So it was a combination of heavy duty research, and I dug deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper, and finally hit ground zero, which is the doctrine of discovery and had nothing to do with music, but it's still on the books. In, in the United States, back two decades before Columbus, the Pope set off the first of a number of decrees that said, any land

23:32 - that wasn't possessed by Christian people was rife for colonization. And if the people there was, we, refused to convert, they were become slaves and even put to death. That led to all the assimilation that's led to Jefferson Monroe, the Madison Doctrine. It's all been part of this, stemming from there, that doctrine of discovery. Some Christian denominations have acknowledged it

24:05 - and apologized last year, last summer, not this past summer, but a few summers ago, Pope Francis made a pilgrimage to Canada and came, went to First Nations, apologized for the Roman Catholic involvement in the boarding schools at one of the big masses. A big, a big banner was unfolded that said, repeal the doctrine. This past summer, the Pope finally officially acknowledged the existence of this. He didn't go so far as to ell it, but it, it's a first step,

24:46 - but it's taken a long time. It's still on the constitutional books. In 2005, Ruth Baden Ginsburg, who was the great progressive Supreme Court court judge, used it as the reason why she denied the JO people, their land back. That it's been at the core of everything. So even though I, I started it in music, in order to understand the music and what it all means, you have

25:21 - to dig into all these little side groups because it all influence who these people are, and what they become and what they believe. And what I found in writing this book is that great things have happened in the past 10 years since Heartbeat War, when the electric pow have come out. When Heartbeat was published, some things were starting to happen. A tribe called Red and Electronica Group from Ottawa came out using

25:55 - pow wow drum recordings as the basis of electronic and dance music. And it's become brought the whole powwow up to date. W at the time that heartbeat came out, a lot of things had had disappeared. The whole Kevin Kassner Dancing with Wolves phenomenal, had dissipated. The Native American, politics were kind of at a lull. artists could not get played on the radio. They could not be seen on TV in an appropriate,

26:31 - realistic kind of way. It just wasn't happening. And nobody was, everybody was in trouble. Record companies that put out indigenous music were either folding or relying on their back catalogs nobody was creating. Even Canyon was going through Changes Canyon, which was on top of the world, being sold in department stores at one time, all Carlos aka sold millions of copies of records.

27:01 - It, it was gone. And now coming back and revisiting this music, I found that there was a great re rebirthing, there was a great renaissance because of social media. They can get their message directly across to the people who wanna listen to it and not even worry about that mainstream. There are avenues for their music to be heard. There are people who are listening to it,

27:36 - and they don't care if the WashU or the white people even here, I mean, they would love to, to be great stars and reach that success. But great things are happening. The political movements are, are really strong, great organization organizing has been done. And in the past week, three things happened that have relevance. The first on November 1st was the publication of Rise Up. And I, and I recommend everybody read it

28:14 - because I've been working with my cousin Terry Katz, who two years ago won the, New York Film Festival best documentary film award on a film doc, on a film series of series of six documentaries based on Rise Up. So it gets into all the political and the music and it, and the social and everything else. also they premiered was the film, the Martin Scorsese Film Killers of the Flower Moon, with a,

28:56 - soundtrack done by Robbie Robinson who passed away August 9th. And right before I wrote Heartbeat, warble and The Electric Pow Wow. I wrote my first book about the band. So that film had special meanings for me. And, and the third thing, it isn't a pleasant thing. It's, it sort of, sort of makes me sick. And that's the outing of Buffy St. Marie as not being indigenous, A Canadian, a Canadian

29:30 - TV documentary series, did their homework and found her birth certificate. And she actually is full, full-blooded Italian, born in, in just north of Boston. And the whole thing is a, is a shame because he was the queen. And it sort of throws everything into turmoil. It's as though we found out that the Beatles came from New Jersey. It just does not make any sense.

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