Category: Academic Journals

The Distant Beat of My Father’s Drums

This article explores contemporary Indigenous music in Manitoba and focuses on NCI-FM, Native Communications Incorporated, an Indigenous radio station that supplies the demand for Indigenous music in Manitoba. Lehr et al. examine the importance of the topics sung about in Indigenous music.

 

Lehr, John C., et al. “The Distant Beat of My Father’s Drums: Contemporary Aboriginal Music and NCI-FM Broadcasting, Manitoba, Canada.” GeoJournal, vol. 65, no. 1/2, 2006, pp. 79–90., www.jstor.org/stable/41148024.

The Beat of Boyle Street

At the Boyle Street Education Centre in Edmonton, Alberta, students are given access to a recording studio as part of a school program. Created to keep Indigenous students interested in school, “The Beat of Boyle Street”, as the program has been named, gives students credits towards graduation for participating in the program, writing and recording their own music and even engaging in rap battles with fellow students. As Wang notes, the Beat of Boyle Street “reengages Edmonton’s Aboriginal inner-city youth in school by teaching them to use hip-hop and rap to express themselves,” (63). Rap battles often occur in place of physical violence, “resulting [in a] track [that] is greater than the sum of its parts,” (66). Wang notes that “the rap battles in this program often uncover social issues that reflect marginalized students’ preoccupation with their perceived status and image,” (65).  During the rap battles, students often realize that they have more in common with their opponent than they had first thought. One of the participants, MC Rasta P, says that the Beat of Boyle Street “’keeps [him] out of trouble’,” (66).

I have included two citations below; one for the article described above, and one for an article written about this program by Fox and Lashua, two of the coordinators of the program.

Lashua, Brett, and Karen Fox. “Rec Needs a New Rhythm Cuz Rap Is Where We’re Livin’.” Leisure Sciences 28. (2006): 267-283. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Feb. 2017

Wang, Elaine L. “The Beat of Boyle Street: Empowering Aboriginal youth through music making.” New Directions for Youth Development 125. (2010): 61-70. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Feb. 2017.

Gesturing Indigenous Futurities Through the Remix

Gesturing Indigenous Futurities Through the Remix by Karyn Recollet is a paper analyzing the YouTube video Ay I Oh Stomp by Skookum Sound System. In her paper, Recollet suggests that Ay I Oh Stomp uses remixing to bring Indigenous peoples out of the past and into the future, through the use of colours, overlaying one video over another, and mirroring the image. Recollet argues that “the layering of moving bodies is an instance wherein relatives are repatriated back to this time/ space continuum” (99). Ay I Oh Stomp layers a clip of a Kwakwaka’wakw Thunderbird dancer from the 1914 film In the land of the headhunters, onto footage of popper Julious iGlide Chisolm, dancing. This effect compares the traditional Thunderbird dancing to the modern style of popping. iGlide represents Indigenous Peoples in the future while the Kwakwaka’wakw Thunderbird dancer breaks into the frame, representing that Indigenous Peoples are not only a people of the past.

Here is the citation for this article and below is also the link to the Ay I Oh Stomp video. I would advise you to watch it, as it will make the paper more interesting.

Recollet, Karyn “Gesturing Indigenous Futurities Through the Remix.” Dance Research Journal, vol. 48 no. 1, 2016, pp. 91-105. Project MUSE, muse.jhu.edu/article/617353.

Ay I Oh Stomp by Skookum Sound System

Hearing Urban Indigeneity in Canada

Alexa Woloshyn’s article Hearing Urban Indigeneity in Canada: Self-Determination, Community Formation, and Kinaesthetic Listening with A Tribe Called Red, describes the way that Indigenous peoples are using music to bring people together and form a community around their shared experience of listening to and dancing to music. Woloshyn speaks of the experience at Electric Pow Wow, an event held at Babylon, a club in Ottawa on the second Saturday of every month. A Tribe Called Red often performs their “powwow step” at this event, which Woloshyn describes as “a genre that blends samples of powwow drumming and singing with dubstep,” (1). Woloshyn claims that the importance of A Tribe Called Red’s music and of Electric Pow Wow comes from the fact that “the music and movement of the Electric Pow Wow dance floor allow Aboriginal youth to express pride in their culture, celebrate their contemporary urban-based identities, and reject colonial regulation of the Aboriginal body,” (2). Woloshyn also examines three songs from A Tribe Called Red’s first two albums.

Included below is the citation for this article as well as links to the three A Tribe Called Red songs analyzed in the article.

Woloshyn, Alexa. “Hearing Urban Indigeneity in Canada: Self-Determination, Community Formation, and Kinaesthetic Listening with A Tribe Called Red.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 39.3 (2015): 1-23. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Feb. 2017.

Red Skin Girl

Sisters

The Road

All the Eagles and the Ravens in the House Say Yeah by Lauren Jessica Amsterdam

In this article, Amsterdam explains her idea of “(ab)originality” as “a style of being both first and fresh while refusing to be anything other than foremost” (54). Amsterdam explores how various artists are displaying their (ab)originality and connecting to their heritage through hip-hop. Amsterdam explores the music of artists like Anishinaabe rapper Wab Kinew, Tlingit hip-hop artist D-Script, Red Eagle, and A Tribe Called Red. Amsterdam speaks to how Indigenous artists are making music to reclaim indigeneity and, with it, the right to define what is authentically indigenous. Amsterdam’s article was published in the second issue of Vol. 37 of The American Indian Culture and Research Journal in 2013.

The full citation of the article is located below. I have also included the links to my posts which include the music videos and songs mentioned in the article.

Amsterdam, Lauren Jessica. “All the Eagles and the Ravens in the House Say Yeah: (Ab)original Hip-Hop, Heritage, and Love.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 37.2 (2013): 53-72. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Feb. 2017.

 

Dead Fly by Brooklyn

Emcee by Conway K

Hear My Cry by Frank Waln

High Above the Clouds by Red Eagle

Last Word by Wab Kinew

Our Home and Native Land by Wab Kinew

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