Keith Secola: Seeds, Songs and Social Commentary

Anishinaabeg blues rocker Keith Secola recently released his seventh studio album, Life is Grand, and has written a pop-rock-opera, Seeds, that was seven years in the making. Through both works, Secola is starting to pull a mainstream audience into, what has been, an underground following, and finding ways to stay true to his message along the way.

Winner of seven Native American Music Awards, and 2011 inductee into the Native American Music Hall of Fame, Keith Secola's best known track is NDN Kars. Fans will be glad to hear his new album, Life is Grand, released late 2012, includes an updated punk version of that well loved song, among a list of new tracks.

"I think the new album (Life Is Grand) is going to be the quintessential protest album of 2012, only I have to disguise it, like Dickens' Christmas Carol, " Secola recently told Christina Rose for Indian Country Today Media Network. In Keith Secola Gets Humble for the Muse Secola also spoke about his pop-rock-opera Seeds:

It took years of writing, and writing is difficult! I started writing it about six, seven years ago. The songs have lyrics and melody, and it’s not some new age, ‘Look at this Indian with the flute’ and the audience fills it in. This has dialogue, long, meaningful, songs, with to-the-point lyrics.

That was the hard part, trying to write without being pretentious about it, because we can’t be so serious, either. You have to write with a sense of humor, and also have to look at the criteria -- one, Is it entertaining? Two, is it philosophical? Three, is it spiritual in nature? And four, is it metaphysical in nature, so people can draw their own meaning to it?

The first song is called “Song For The Marginals”. And we say, "Come out, come out marginal creatures! Now is the time to dance under the sun, because we have been dancing under the full moon for a long time, and now it is our time to reclaim the sun!"

The songs on Life is Grand are also poignant, powerful and to-the point. Check out the track Say Your Name, written about residential schools:

Get the new Keith Secola album on CDBaby or iTunes, and read the complete ICTMN interview here.

Samantha Crain: Music, Poetry and Stolen Gear

Choctaw singer-songwriter Samantha Crain chatted recently with Indian Country Today about her path as a musician, life on the road and her upcoming new album Kid Face. This week, Samantha's getting more press but for the sad news that her guitars have been stolen!

On November 16th, Samantha posted a plea on Craigslist that her two workhorse guitars, the ones she uses for touring, writing and recording, were stolen from her home in Shawnee, Oklahoma. For a musician, losing the tools of one's trade is heartbreaking much less a huge expense and threat to their livliehood.

"These are my life and blood" Samantha wrote in her post and her community was quick to respond with ways to support her. A donation campaign is now online to help raise funds to replace Samantha's Martin acoustic and Jagstang electric - check it out at donatesamanthacrain.blogspot.ca.

In happier news, Samantha Crain recently spoke with Vincent Schilling (host of Native Trailblazers) for Indian Country Today. In Singer-Songwriter Samantha Crain Talks Music, Poetry and Neil Young Samantha shared her now established career got started a bit by happenstance:

I started playing music as a means to travel, actually. I started this as an afterthought that I grew to love tremendously and found an identity. I started touring and writing when I was about 18 or 19. I didn’t take any time to hone it, I wasn’t one of those people who started playing really young and then it eventually turned into this. I naïvely jumped into it all at once.

I wrote six or seven songs and then I said I can go play these in a coffee shop wherever I want to go. that’s kind of how I started, I just started booking shows for myself all over the place or wherever I thought I might want to go spend some time and then I realized, “Well I should probably make a record so I have something to sell to the people while I’m playing there.” I said, “Well I guess you should probably write some more songs…” I learned about it as I was in the business.

I grew to love and appreciate the art of songwriting—that has become my main focus of it now. I still do a ton of touring, but songwriting is something that is super special to me and I love meeting other songwriters and hearing about the other ways they write songs.

When I was in college, I was a creative writing major. I studied poets and how there were all of these different movements and poetry. I feel like there is that same sort of thing and songwriting, it’s just not so cut and dry and talked about as much. I find the same thing in studying different songwriters in different areas of songwriting. I think there can be the same thing said about the movements there were for poetry and art.

Samantha goes on to reveal the poets she's been most influenced by, how her new album Kid Face represents a shift in her songwriting style, and why she just wants to be Neil Young. Read the complete interview here and be sure to check out the fundraiser to replace her instruments too.

Vincent Schilling's Book "Native Musicians in The Groove"

Vincent Schilling's book Native Musicians In The Groove focuses on the lives and accomplishments of Indigenous musicians.

St. Regis Mohawk music journalist Vincent Schilling is the host of Native Trailblazers - one of the most listened to Indigenous focused radio shows in Indian Country - and writer of a related series of books. The second book from that series, Native Americans In The Groove, pays homage to the Indigenous musicians he has come in contact with over the years.

Growing up in California, Vincent's love of literature and writing started at an early age in the library reading books when he wasn't playing at the beach. His path in media began at San Francisco State University where he studied broadcasting, theatre and science. Later he would be prompted by his loving wife to explore his talent for writing, and with the challenge of making a sustainable career as a writer, Vincent began his path in book writing.

His first publishing venture was to be an author of children s books until his publishing company approached him with the idea of writing about Indigenous people in the United States and Canada, which he was thrilled to do instead. The Native Trailblazers book series consists of five books that focus on Native women, men, athletes, activists and musicians.

Native Musicians In The Groove takes a look at the lives and accomplishments of ten Indigenous music artists: Crystal Shawanda, Gabriel Ayala, Leela Gilday, Michael Bucher, Blackfire, Shane Yellowbird, Mary Youngblood, Four Rivers Drum, Mato Nanji and Jamie Coon. The book was a finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards in 2010.

In addition to being an author and journalist (he's a regular contributor to Indian Country Today Media Network) Vincent is the manager of Cherokee singer-songwriter Michael Bucher, and host of the Native Trailblazers podcast on BlogTalkRadio - weekly in-depth and topical interviews with inspiring people from our community and where you can hear the RPM Download of the Week during the show every Friday at 7pm EST.

Get your copy of Native Musicians In The Groove from Native Voices: www.nativevoicesbooks.com/catalog/2.

#PowwowWednesday: The Cabazon Indio Inter-Tribal Powwow 2012

This past weekend, the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians hosted the Cabazon Indio Powwow XXX in Indio, California. With 65 participating tribes, the annual event was packed with more than 450 dancers and 6,000 attendees.

We spotted the powwow on Indian Country Today and found this fantastic clip on YouTube of the MNX Crew providing an inter-tribal dance song:

Over on mydesert.com we came across a beautiful photo set of the powwow's grand entry. Here are a few of the vibrant moments caputured by photographer Crystal Chatham:

Check out all the photos at Cabazon Indio Powwow Grand Entry.

#PowwowWednesday: Northern Cree at San Manuel Band of Mission Indians’ Powwow

Sure we're letting #PowwowWednesday take a break until the powwow trail gets busy again the new year, but we had to bring you this new video of Northern Cree knocking the moccasins off the crowd at the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians’ Powwow recently.

As Indian Country Today put it in Northern Cree Blow The Roof Off the San Manuel Pow Wow, "you can practically feel the place vibrating with energy, passion and excitement."

We feel it and know you will too.

Cherokee MC Litefoot Shares Wisdom on Becoming 'Good Enough'

Cherokee rapper, actor, activist and mentor Litefoot has been influencing people on Turtle island for close to two decades with his music, movies and community work.

He recently shared some words of wisdom with Indian Country Today writing about the ways we perceive ourselves as Indigenous people rising out of the struggle, attaining our own destiny through the acceptance of our own path and healing as a collective conscience.

From Becoming 'Good Enough':

Each piece of the journey builds upon the next phase of it. Those phases become the chapters that are recorded, collected and assembled chronologically into the book we call our lives. The hope in looking back at all of the moments throughout our journey is that we find we were good students. That we were able to be calm and find the solutions to the problems—no matter how loud the rain and thunder happened to be at that moment in our journey. We would hope to find ample times where we kept our head up on the journey to look around and see the things that we were passing by. That we were accessible to help others “stuck in the mud” in their journey by sharing with them how we had previously “unstuck” ourselves. That we cherished the journey in as much as, we could have easily become frustrated with all the unplanned moments that arose during it. The point is that all the moments of the journey are important and define who we were, who we are and who and what we are remembered as having been. The moments at the start of the journey might be compared to the “edged” pieces of a puzzle. They are the pieces that are most easy to assemble. They lay the framework for the image that begins to come together with each piece that is laid. Several different oddly shaped pieces that we slowly put together throughout our journey that one by one start to form the picture that the Creator painted of us before our birth. Every piece is important. No part of the picture is greater than any other; the sum is a total of its parts.

It's an inspiring, thought-provoking read on Indigenous identity. Read Litefoot's article in its entirety on ICMTN: "Becoming Good Enough".

Christa Couture Interview on Indian Country Today

Indian Country Today's Vincent Schilling interviewed RPM's own Christa Couture about her music career, touring and new EP releases.

Alongside her busy schedule as production manager of RPM.fm, Christa Couture is also an accomplished musician. She has toured all over Canada and the U.K., and even won a Canadian Aboriginal Music Award for Best Folk Album. Recently Indian Country Today sat down with her for an interview with Vincent Schilling. Here's a sample:

How did you become a musical artist? In high school I had decided I wasn’t going to sing anymore. I did a lot of musicals and thought it was too hard. I wanted to go to Broadway, but I gave up. I said, “Screw it, this is too hard.” And I went to work in television. I didn’t sing or play an instrument for a few years. I really started to miss it. I had that ache in my belly for it and I needed an outlet and a way to express myself. I started taking guitar lessons. I was a late bloomer. I didn’t release my first album until I was 24 years old. It’s still young, but I was just beginning then.

To read more about Christa Couture in Indian Country Today, check out the article: A Conversation With Cree/Metis Folk Singer Christa Couture.