INDIGENOUS POP EDITED BY JEFF BERGLUND JAN JOHNSON KIMBERLI LEE INDIGENOUS POP Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop TUCSON The University of Arizona Press www.uapress.arizona.edu © 2016 The Arizona Board of Regents All rights reserved. Published 2016 Printed in the United States of America 21 20 19 18 17 16 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-0944-7 (paper) Cover design by Leigh McDonald Cover art by Steven Paul Judd Publication of this book is made possible in part by the proceeds of a permanent endowment created with the assistance of a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Berglund, Jeff, editor. | Johnson, Jan (Janis), editor. | Lee, Kimberli A., 1959– editor. Title: Indigenous pop : Native American music from jazz to hip hop / edited by Jeff Berglund, Jan Johnson, And Kimberli Lee. Description: Tucson : The University of Arizona Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015034492 | ISBN 9780816509447 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Indians of North America—Music—History and criticism. | Popular music— United States—History and criticism. Classification: LCC ML3557 .I63 2016 | DDC 781.64089/97073—dc23 LC record available at http:// lccn.loc.gov/2015034492 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). WHAT IS THE SOUND OF AMERICA? After Silas Whitman & Ron Welburn Did Chief Joseph hear the Dixieland jazz, the ragtime jubilees and house parties, the evangelists bands playing Pentecostal hymns on hot, summer nights? Was he there for the do-wop, the creek river rallies, the syncopation, that grind and gyration of hips and spines on a hard-wood floor? Did he hear, wow the crowd on a quarter-acre of heartbreak? Did Chief Joseph ask: Are you a musician or an entertainer? Their hymnals transposed to bell and drum, from the old ledgers, from the King James Bible. And did he speak the language of the later Gods? Dizzy Gillespie, Coltrane, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Charlie “Bird” Parker? This is what happened when the missionaries tried to convert our heathen souls: The Lollipop Six, Nezpercians, Jack Teagarden, International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Scrapper Blackwell, “Big Chief ” Russell Moore, Dan Beyhylle and the Ten Little Indians, Junior Walker and the All Stars, Pee Wee Russell, Harry “Fox” McCormack, Chief Shunatona and the All Indian Band. What is the sound of America? Theching-chinga-ching, ching-chinga-ching of brush strokes against a brass cymbal? a 49’er, I don’t care if you’re married I’ll get you yet, I’ll take you home in my one-eyed Ford? Horns so anguished they made people weep? Buglers dodging flying bullets? Survivance. This is the sound of survivance. The sound of wind whistling through the Snake River Canyon. The sound of a stomp dance, bells and seeds. The sound of “Indians Playing the White Man’s Jazz.” —Tiffany Midge (Standing Rock Sioux) CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction 3 1 Joe Shunatona and the United States Indian Reservation Orchestra 17 JOhN W. TrOuTman A2 merican Indian Jazz: Mildred Bailey and the Origins of America’s Most Musical Art Form 33 ChAd hAmIll 3 Jazz and the Politics of Identity: The Spirit of Jim Pepper 47 BIll SIegel S4 inging for the People: The Protest Music of BuffyS ainte-Marie and Floyd Westerman 61 KlImBer I lee 5 Brothers of the Blade: Three Native Axmen: Link Wray, Robbie Robertson, and Jesse Ed Davis 75 Scott PrINZINg 6 “We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee”: The Engaged Resistance of Folk and Rock in the Red Power Era 92 JNA JOhnson VIII CONTENTS 7 “We’ll Get There with Music”: Sonic Literacies, Rhetorics of Alliance, and Decolonial Healing in Joy Harjo’s Winding Through the Milky Way 107 GabrIelA Raquel Rios 8 Hearing the Heartbeat: Environmental Cultural Values in the Lyrics of Native Songwriters 123 SAmanthA HaseK and APrIl e. LindAlA 9 “The Story of a Lifetime”: Singing, Crossing, and Claiming in Lila Downs’s “Minimum Wage” 136 CSIA e C. Cobos 10 Babylon Inna Hopiland: Articulations of Tradition and Social Injustice by the Hopi Reggae Musician Casper Loma-da-wa Lomayesva 155 Da vId S. WAlSh 11 Blackfire’s Land-Based Ethics: The Benally Family and the Protection of Shi Kéyah Hozhoni 179 Jeff BergluNd 12 A Reading of Eekwol’s Apprentice to the Mystery as an Expression of Cree Youth’s Cultural Role and Responsibility 201 Gail A. Mackay 13 “By the Time I Get to Arizona”: Hip Hop Responses to Arizona SB 1070 224 mArCOS del hIerrO Contributors 237 Index 243 AckNOWLEDGMENTS HE EDITORS WOULD like to thank supporters of this project from its inception: audiences at the American Studies Association, the Native T American and Indigenous Studies Association, and the Native Amer- ican Literature Symposium. Special thanks to Simon Ortiz for recognizing early on the contribution this book would make. Thank you to Patti Hartmann, formerly of the University of Arizona Press, for being interested in this proj- ect when it was a promise of an idea, and to Kristen Buckles, for being an incredibly patient and supportive editor, who ushered the finished manuscript through the editorial process. Thanks to the whole University of Arizona Press team, from the designers and production team to the copyeditor, who have made this project even better. The editors would like to give special thanks to Tiffany Midge for the gift of her poem and to Steven Paul Judd for the use of his artwork on our cover. Thanks also to all the contributors for their hard work and patience while this book came together. Jeff wants to thank Monica Brown, his partner in all ways, for her encour- agement and steadfast love; he also wants to thank their daughters, Isabella and Juliana, for their support and inspiration. Thanks to Klee Benally, Jeneda Benally, Clayson Benally, and Berta Benally for their cooperation on his chap- ter, but also for inspiring him to see that music and art are transformative prac- tices with real-world consequences. X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Jan thanks her beloved late parents, Pat and Johnny Johnson, for their love and inspiration, and all those in her life who have taught her to see, hear, think, and feel in the deeper registers. Special thanks to John Rankin for Slim Harpo, Macon Fry for Candi Staton, and Jeff Hannusch for “Boogie in the Mind” and many, many more. Kimberli would like to send thanks to her dad, David Lee, and daughter, Cheyenne Roy, for their generous love and support. She wants to also recog- nize and thank her Charging Crow family and all her relations, colleagues, and friends who have helped her in this writing endeavor. Thanks especially for all those singers, songwriters, and musicians who have made this world a better place to be. INDIGENOUS POP INTRODUCTION When did it begin? When a Nez Perce or Ponca trumpet player at Carlisle Indian School accustomed to playing Sousa marches coaxed from his horn a curvy melody he’d heard on a late night radio broadcast? Or when a Shawnee teen- ager poked a hole in the speaker of his amplifier, spun the volume dial up to 10 and strummed his Danelectro guitar? When did Indians begin to combine their tribal musical traditions with the popular music they heard all around them? NDIGENOUS POP: NatiVE AMERICAN MUSIC FROM JAZZ TO HIP HOP creates a forum for the interdisciplinary discussion of popular music per- I formed and created by American Indian musicians. In addition to exam- ining the influence of popular musical forms from blues, jazz, country western, rock, folk, punk, reggae, and hip hop on Indigenous expressive forms, our con- tributors similarly note the ways that the various genres have been shaped by what some have called the “Red Roots” of American-originated musical styles. Our book aims to fill a noticeable gap in serious scholarship on contempo- rary Native music, and asserts that the study of this body of music provides an important window into history, politics, and tribal communities, as it simulta- neously provides a complement to literary, historiographical, anthropological, and sociological discussions of Native culture. In doing so, our understanding of American culture as a whole is challenged and enriched. The title of our book—Indigenous Pop—implies our rationale: we’re simul- taneously interested in examining the Indigenous roots of American musical 4 INTRODUCTION traditions, as well as the way that popular (pop) contemporary and emerging (fresh) forms have led to innovative transformations and melding with tribal and Native traditions. “Pop” has different connotations in different eras, so it is an ever-changing, elusive category that is ineluctably altered by its conjoining with “Indigenous.” By pairing the term with “Indigenous,” we challenge expec- tations about the term itself, and look beyond simple understandings of “pop” as music masterminded for consumer consumption, following the immediate trends of the particular cultural moment. Our contributors take up the chal- lenge of exploring this pairing, as well as the cross-cultural influence. We are simultaneously interested in examining the Indigenous roots of American musical traditions, as well as the way that popular contemporary, emerging (fresh) forms have led to innovative transformations and meld- ing with tribal and Native traditions. As live performances gave way to vinyl records, expanded radio play, and eventually to television, cassette recording, satellite, CDs, digital music, the Internet, and the iPod, the nature of audience, performativity, reception, and commercialization all underwent radical changes and expanded the border-crossing aspects of the transmission of music. By joining “pop” with “Indigenous,” we are also applying pressure to some notions about traditionalism and Indigenous cultures by foregrounding that tradition is not a static category, but one that is contested and evolving.