The Most Slept-On Indigenous Album of 2014: Ana Tijoux, Vengo

There was one Indigenous album of 2014 that stood apart from all the rest—Ana Tijoux's Vengo.

Somehow, indescribably, when we compiled our Best Indigenous Music of 2014, we didn't include one of the most stellar albums of the year.

Ana Tijoux's Vengo was hailed as a nearly perfect record almost from the moment it was released in March 2014. But despite generating huge waves in her Chilean homeland and receiving critical accolades from some North American critics and SXSW attendees, Vengo didn't make the full impact that we thought it should have. Which is why we're putting the album into a category unto itself.

Tijoux is already a legend among her South American fanbase, where she has been called "a Latin American Lauryn Hill" and "Chile's hip-hop heroine". Now she's making serious inroads into the rest of the world's musical consciousness. Having recently won several Latin Grammys, and with endorsements from the likes of Radiohead's Thom Yorke, and a song from her previous solo album, 1977, featured on the hit TV show Breaking Bad, Tijoux is generating much deserved attention for her passionate, provocative and political music.

She first made her mark as part of best-selling Chilean hip-hop group Makiza in the late 90s, but Tijoux is now firmly established as a superstar solo artist, whose latest effort ranks with the greats in any language or genre.

"Vengo is virtually flawless"

Vengo, Tijoux's fourth solo album, offers a relentlessly uncompromising vision and infectious mix of musical influences, intricate lyricism and anticolonial politics.

Inspired by the writings of Eduardo Galeano and  Naomi Klein, Vengo rings out with the sounds of Indigenous and Andean influences, connecting her Aymara roots with a wondrous mix of hip-hop, jazz, funk and beautiful live instrumentation arrangements. Tijoux's lyrical dreams of the Empire's fall, the end of patriarchy, the pursuit of global justice, and the love of family inform the album's thematic core. From the pride-filled bounce of title track "Vengo" and the fire of "Somos Sur" (We Are the South), her bombastic collaboration with Palestinian hip-hop artist Shadia Monsour, to acoustic pieces like "Rumbo al Sol" and the almost whispered urgency of "Río Abajo", the album draws strength and force from its hybrid vision of freedom found in "joyful musical rebellion".

For Tijoux, music is a weapon and a way of visioning the world: "a tool to have reflection, conversation and dialogue"—but also a way to "decolonize ourselves in our own music".

Righteous, beautiful, proudly feminist and revolutionary, in the best sense of the word, Vengo is both the most slept-on and the most compelling Indigenous album of 2014.

If you don't know, now you know.

Stream: Ana Tijoux - "Vengo"

Watch Ana Tijoux performance and interview on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic

Watch Ana Tijoux interview on Democracy Now

Listen to Ana Tijoux on Music and Motherhood

STREAM VENGO ON SPOTIFY

Watch Ana Tijoux - "Somos Sur (ft. Shadia Monsour)"

The 15 Best Indigenous Music Videos of 2014

Indigenous artists continued their takeover of popular culture in 2014. Here are the best Indigenous music videos of the year.

First things first, if you missed our epic selections of the Best Indigenous Music of 2014, you should go read and listen to what we picked. Also check out the Most Slept-On Indigenous Album of the year.

And as though our top albums, EPs, singles and our Best of 2014 Remixtape weren't enough to satiate your hunger for Native artistry, we've also compiled our favourite Indigenous music videos of 2014.

There were many amazing, cinema-sonic moments put on tape this year, but these were the videos that made the deepest, most engaging, and even funniest, impressions on us.

15. Jayli Wolf - "I Don't Remember"

Part of the fifth season of APTN's First Tracks, this is a sibylline dreamscape for a haunting and deceptively simple song by Jayli Wolf  (Métis). Directed by Michelle Latimer, we love getting lost in the video's black and white layering of starry, underwater, earthy and mesmerizing images.

14. Scatter Their Own- "Taste the Time"

"We are only as clean as our water" says Oglala Lakota duo Scatter Their Own. Want to know why Indigenous people are rising up against pipelines through our territories? This is why. An ominous and compelling...er...taste of things to come. That is, unless we change course.

13. Princess Nokia - "Nokia"

Cyber-supernatural 90s vibes abound in this neon and glittery ode to anime, BFFs, Nickelodeon, robotic dogs, and Nokia ringtones, among assorted other shimmering oddities. Flashbackward to bedazzled future beats in this trippy slice of this Taino Princess' world. You'll be hypnotized just like we were.

12. Mic Jordan - "Modern Day Warrior (ft. Real Truth)"

Youthful, exuberant, dedicated to the struggle and dropping hip-hop gems, up-and-comer Mic Jordan holds it down rapping directly about what it means to thrive and survive as a modern day warrior for his people, the Turtle Mountain Chippewa. Now that's what's up. This clip comes from Jordan's slept on album, Sometime After 83, which he dropped earlier this year (and which you should go download for free right now). The struggle lives and breathes in the artistry of talented Native MCs like Mic Jordan. "And damn right / I was built to fight". Tell it!

11. Kinnie Starr ft. Ja$E El Niño - "Save Our Waters"

Mohawk artist Kinnie Starr's not one to be shy in speaking her mind and this ode to protecting coastal waters from intrusive pipeline development finds a perfect counterpart in this collab with Haidawood—a stop motion animation video that works perfectly for the track that CBC called "part indictment, part wake-up call". We are in need of both at this point, and this is a creative and playful way to get the message out. Now let it compel action.

10. Drezus - "Warpath"

Although we're not exactly sold on Mic.com's framing of Indigenous hip-hop as "the most authentic rap we have today" (what is authentic? who is we?), we get what they were trying to say. No one else is bringing together raw talent, creativity and firepower like Native artists. Plains Cree/Saulteaux artist Drezus doesn't mix words or mess around and on this Stuey Kubrick-directed clip, he reps for the people—painted up, fire burning, singers around the drum, wild horses running slow mo, and surrounded by his fam and relations. That's power. Watch it all the way to the end for a special appearance by Beau Dick, master carver and hereditary chief of the Namgis First Nation, making that west coast warrior connect.

9. Angel Haze - "A Tribe Called Red"

Two of our favourite artists joined forces this year and the results exceeded our expectations. Although a lyric video for this tune was released a while back, this official video for Cherokee singer/MC Angel Haze's collab with A Tribe Called Red brings that ultra-crisp, black and white, leather-clad, dialed aesthetic we were hoping for. You want some more? Good luck competing with Angel Haze's "deity swag and omnipotent style".

8. Radical Son - "Human Behaviour"

When minimalism works, it really works. Keeping with that vibe, Kamilaroi artist Radical Son's video for his soulful tune "Human Behaviour" works with opaque spaces, blending deep, dark blacks and fading whites and greys, and using its stripped down visual spectrum to pull the gravity of the song's deep reggae groove out from the depths. Dope.

7. Sacramento Knoxx ft. DJ Dez - "The Trees Will Grow Again"

Community organizer, activist, MC, hip-hop producer and micro-documentary maker, Anishinaabe/Xicano artist Sacramento Knoxx is a man of many talents. This joint brings it all together with a dope visual delivery of rugged anti-imperialist politics, BDS empowerment, and raw hip-hop talent. That, plus the proceeds of the track go to benefiting youth and community. Knoxx is elevating the game and bringing power back to the people. The RaizUp is right. Represent.

6. Cree Nation Artists (Chisasibi Community) - "I Believe"

Ok, this one is pretty amazing. Hip-hop artist/producer and educator David Hodges has been working with the Cree Nation Government on a community-based music project called "N'we Jinan". Travelling throughout Cree communities in Quebec, Hodges set up a mobile studio, created music with youth and, in the process, produced a 19-song album that just went to Number 1 on iTunes in Canada. "I Believe" is the first single from the album—and it's an inspiring showcase of rising youth talent and empowerment. Raise it up for the next generation celebrating "culture, language and love". These are the voices we'll be listening for.

5. Greg Grey Cloud Storms the U.S. Senate with Honor Song After Keystone XL Vote

When the U.S. Senate votes to reject the Keystone XL pipeline by one vote, ONE VOTE, what else are you going to do but sing an honour song until they kick you out of there? Well, that's exactly what Crow Creek Sioux member Greg Grey Cloud did. You want to restore order Elizabeth Warren? Join Greg in "honouring the leaders who stood up for the people". Respect!

4. A Tribe Called Red - "Sisters (ft. Northern Voice)"

It's hard not to get behind a video that features a song we love, made by a crew the entire Native community loves, featuring Natives we recognize, and basically depicting exactly how it feels to get down to Mohawk/Cayuga/Anishinaabe crew A Tribe Called Red's music. Of course it's a party. Of course we're dancing in our bedrooms, in the convenience store, at the club, and in the car. Oh and course we have fireworks, colour smoke bomb things, and a Mohawk Warrior flag flying as we roll down a winter highway with the sunroof rolled back, the windows rolled down, and ATCR on blast in the system. You know we're all headed to the same Electric Powwow night anyways. See you on the dancefloor, relations.

3. Supaman - "Prayer Loop Song" 

Just another day in the life of your average beatboxing, freestyling, regalia wearing, powwow and b-boy fancy dancing, flute playing, drum beating, record scratching, loop-making, Crow Nation hip-hop SUPAMAN. They don't call him that for nothing, you know. Mad mad skills. Watch and learn.

2. Rebel Music - "Native America"

When we found out Rebel Music were debuting their Season 2 premiere, "Native America", as a Facebook-only video stream, we were all "Really guys? Facebook only?". But then we remembered how much NDNs lovvvvvvve Facebook—and how amazing the "Native America" episode is—and we realized this was actually a pretty brilliant strategy. The episode became a rallying cry for Native people across Turtle Island: it was viewed more than 2 million times in its first week (at last count it was approaching 4.5 Million views and still climbing). Needless to say, many tears of joy and shouts of Native Pride were shared (check the FB comments) as we watched ourselves and our community being represented for how we really are: vibrant, creative, alive and thriving in the midst of all the insanity! So special shout outs to Frank Waln, Inez Jasper, Nataanii Means and Mike Cliff for representing their nations—and all of our people—in a good way. Rebel Music: Native America reminded us that everyday is a great day to be Indigenous.

1. 1491s - "Cherokee"

There's no way this wasn't making the cut. Let's face it. With what we're up against, collectively, we all need more humour in our lives. And, according to the Dine/Dakota/Osage/Seminole/Creek comedy crew the 1491s, we all need more Europe in our lives too. The band, that is, not the continent. The 1491s have made a lot of amazing videos over the years, but this one is such an incredible parody of the 1986 hit, there's just no way the original can compete anymore. And that's saying something, because have you seen the original?? All we can say is MOAR. More of this please. More Turdle Island, more NAMMY GOLD, more HBC blanket antics, more decolonizing Europe, and more of whatever the hell Ryan Red Corn is doing. A newly indigenized modern hair metal classic. Aho!

RPM's Best Indigenous Music of 2014

The Indigenous Music Renaissance is here to stay and Native artists are leading the way. Here are our picks for the best Indigenous music of 2014.

In another incredible year for Indigenous art and creativity, Native artists continued to break down walls, claim new spaces and make their presence felt...everywhere. As a renewed wave of uprisings for freedom and justice swept the globe, Indigenous musicians played a central role in soundtracking the struggle and making rebel music for the movement.

From the rez to the streets, from pipeline protests to massive music festivals, Native music made an indelible intervention into the cultural and political landscape of 2014.

The RPM extended fam weighed in with their picks and favourite sounds of the year. Some songs and sounds that found their way into our headphones and hearts included:

Iskwé's “Will I See” Sister Says' Heart Placement Kait Angus' "The Mason's Heart" Moe Clark's Within Sean Conway's The Blue Acre Logan Staats' "What You Love" Kinnie Starr's "Save Our Waters" Tall Paul's "I Don't Need Glove" Quese IMC's "The Comanche" Sacramento Knoxx's "The Trees Will Grow Again" Frank Waln, Naát'áaníí Means, Mike Cliff & Inez Jasper's "The Revolution" Boogey the Beat's "DJ Set for MMIW" A Tribe Called Red's "Burn Your Village to the Ground"

And that's not even counting our Top 10 Albums of the year. Let's go.

The Best Indigenous Music of 2014: Impossible Nothing Remixtape

This year we're excited to present not only some of our favourite songs, mixes, EPs and albums by Indigenous artists, but also a very special Best of 2014 REMIXTAPE assembled by the prolific beatsmith Impossible Nothing of the Skookum Sound System crew. We compiled our selections and IMPLNTHG fed the sounds through his rapid-fire maximalist machine. The results are an incredible blast of rhythmic sample chops and skillful sonic wizardry.

Grab the remixtape below and head to Impossible Nothing's Bandcamp for the individual remixed tracks.

Download: The Best Indigenous Music of 2014 - Impossible Nothing REMIXTAPE

RPM's 10 Best Indigenous Albums of 2014

Stream our Best of 2014 Playlist

10. City Natives - Red City

Claiming their rightful spot in our Top 10 for the second year in a row, City Natives returned this year with their sophomore album, Red City, a confident declaration of the group's equal skills on the mic and behind the boards. From front to back, what elevated Red City from many other Native hip-hop releases this year was consistency. On a record with no weak links, Red City's tightly woven ten tracks of heartfelt boom bap beats showcase Beaatz, IllFundz, Gearl and BnE proving to the world why they're a force to be reckoned with. Game elevated. Now who's next?

9. Digging Roots - For the Light 

After four years of heavy touring and much anticipation from their fans the world over, husband and wife lead Digging Roots released the For the Light, this summer.  Life on the road and innate wanderlust inhabits the sonic kaleidoscope of roots and blues infused songs that travel, lyrically, from inner cities to back roads and everything in between. Raven Kanatakta and ShoShona Kish wrote and produced the collection of 12 love songs - and while the stories touch on desperation, resiliance, troublemakers, lovers and freedom fighters, Kish will emphasize they each stem from love - that pulsate with passion and focus. The title track, sung in Anishinabemowin and English, chants "push, push, reach, reach" with bluesy intensity, exemplary of why Kish's smokey wailing vocals and Kantakta's bombastic guitar pushed For the Light into our top 10.

8. V/A - The Invasion Day Mixtape 2014

Kickstarting the year with a blast of hip-hop firepower, The Invasion Day Mixtape contests the colonial occupation of "Australia" with lyrical finesse, banging beats and a rockstar list of Indigenous hip-hop artists. With standout tracks from La Teila, MC Triks and bAbe SUN, and Provocalz, this compilation boldly declares its ancestral connections while giving urgent voice to blackfellas' resistance. Why celebrate the settler invasion when we could be celebrating ourselves? Shout out to Brisbane Blacks, it's time to "raise ya fist for revolution!".

7. Angel Haze - Dirty Gold 

Bold, defiant and with a straight up give no fucks attitude, Angel Haze took her album into her own hands and surreptitiously leaked it free to the world in the last days of 2013. Mired in a fight with her major label Island/Republic, Haze pushed the album directly into the spotlight of public attention and the label scrambled to move up its release date. On the eve of 2014, as the new year swirled into motion, Dirty Gold got its "official release"—and Angel Haze's rapid-fire lyrical acrobatics paired with A Tribe Called Red's beats, and her acoustic reworkings of crossover pop anthems like "Battle Cry", have been stuck in our heads and on rotation all year long. Angel Haze is a confident lyricist, a dope MC, and a compelling singer who seems most in her element when spitting pure fire over rap anthems, but she could easily direct her talent wherever she damn well chooses. We can't wait to see where she's going next.

6. Blue King Brown - Born Free

The first time we heard Born Free we knew it was a contender for album of the year. Displaying an assuredness and power in both songwriting and production, the album expands and deepens Blue King Brown's foundation in roots and reggae music while giving more shine to lead singer Nattali Rize's hypnotic vocals. Every track on this record is filled with equal parts fire and love. BKB is on the move and headed for big things in the days to come. This is music for the movement, for life, for the people. Songs to uplift and inspire us to keep seeking freedom in the midst of our chaotic world. Calling all nations to RIZE UP.

5. V/A - Native North America (Vol. 1): Aboriginal Folk, Rock, and Country 1966–1985

Much good ink has been spilled about Native North America in recent weeks (when was the last time Native music was reviewed simultaneously in the Guardian, Pitchfork and Rolling Stone?), and we're encouraged to know that many others, like us, are discovering—or in some cases re-discovering—this legendary generation of Indigenous musicians. NNA Vol. 1 highlights the incredible work of underrepresented artists from across Canada and up to Alaska, whose music both inspired and provided the foundation for what many Native artists are doing today. More than 12 years in the making, Kevin "DJ Sipreano" Howes, has compiled an awe-inspiring array of Indigenous music that, over its 34 tracks, is at once groundbreaking, revolutionary, and wonderfully familiar. We can hear ourselves in these sounds and, in looking and listening back, we can draw strength from those artists that have gone before us: artists whose time has finally come to be heard. And this is just Volume 1. Brilliant.

4. Princess Nokia - Metallic Butterfly

What is it about this record? Is it the quirky Game of Thrones-inspired D&B breakbeat ballads? The anime-flavoured, retro-futurist cyber-rap bounce? The Northern Cree-sampling, Björk-like swirl and swoon of haunted electronics? Somewhere in the flow and flux of Princess Nokia's exquisitely defined 90s sci-fi bricolage aesthetics, Metallic Butterfly takes flight into an uncharted space-time reality suffused with effortless eclecticism. One of the most innovative and inspiring albums of the year. The recombinant future has arrived.

3. Silver Jackson - Starry Skies Opened Eyes 

Meanwhile, in the outer reaches of the multiverse, Silver Jackson lights up the Sitka coordinates of the Black Constellation with a beautiful album of delicate sonics and folk-art electronic experiments. Expanding the future-now to its natural state of awakened presence, Starry Skies Opened Eyes does exactly what it sets out to do: it wraps you up in haunting melodies and carries you out to sea, drifting and reflecting a journey toward the morning horizon. By the time you arrive, you want to return immediately and dive deep into the sky all over again. That's what we did. Over and over and over again.

2. Tanya Tagaq - Animism

 

After, and almost in spite of, the deserving accolades this album has already received, it's still hard to find words that do Animism justice. Tanya Tagaq's latest album is a pulse-pounding, haunting record of her incredible power to call forth an often dormant spirit of potent creativity from herself and from her audience. It is this restless mix of sonic fury and impassioned expression that puts Tagaq in a nearly singular category among her Indigenous art and music contemporaries. Animism, the album, is in some ways, incidental to her larger project—that of unleashing her creative spirit to the world in every available form. The album is incredible and devastatingly primal, but that's a given. What is unique about Tagaq's music, from her riveting live shows (including an absolutely spellbinding performance at this year's Polaris Music Awards, which she won) to every recorded soundwave captured by Animism, is Tagaq's transcendent capacity to demand that we, as listeners, become co-creators of her music. This is her gift to us, both an exhilarating and, at times, exhausting, call to creative action. Unbowed and undaunted by haters, naysayers, or the otherwise perplexed, Tanya Tagaq keeps expanding her artistic universe and power, orbiting around us, radiating light and sound. A force of nature indeed.

1. Thelma Plum - Monsters (EP) 

All it took was four songs to put Thelma Plum at the top of our list. Four songs. Where other artists on this year's list explored decidedly otherworldly realms and sonic terrain, Plum's Monsters EP arrived fully formed, locked into a precise space of dark pop perfection. From the first notes of "Monsters" through the aching "Young in Love" and the anthemic "How Much Does Your Love Cost?" to the final haunting bars of "Candle", Plum does more in the brief span of this EP than many artists do in entire albums. There are no misplaced notes here. Every song is wound tight, expertly produced, beautifully sung and absolutely mesmerizing. Monsters is poised to send Thelma Plum's career into the stratosphere. All this before she's even released her debut album. That's coming next year. Did we mention she's 19? Exactly.

Also check out our 15 Best Indigenous Music Videos of 2014  and The Most Slept-On Indigenous Album of 2014

--- Chi Miigwetch to Tara Williamson, Leanne Simpson, Susan Blight, and Melody McKiver for their expertise & impeccable selections. Image credit: Sonny Assu, "Home Coming" (2014). Digital intervention on Paul Kane painting. More info at: sonnyassu.com