What were we saying about Indigenous music and artists taking over popular culture? These are some big moves: A Tribe Called Red's music is featured in the trailer for the upcoming Mark Wahlberg film, The Gambler.
Indigenous artists are infiltrating all kinds of new spaces, the latest being the silver screen soundtracks to some of Hollywood's biggest films.
In this trailer for Rupert Wyatt's new film, The Gambler, starring Mark Wahlberg and John Goodman, you can catch the stuttering samples and boom clap beginnings of A Tribe Called Red's massive tune "Electric Pow Wow". A song which, incidentally, has now clocked more than 2.2 million views on YouTube.
ATCR is officially rolling with the big boys. Watch the trailer for The Gambler below.
Official Trailer: The Gambler - Awake
Listen to the original track A Tribe Called Red - "Electric Pow Wow"
Boogey the Beat drops an Indigenized-trap tune sampling pow wow vocals on his latest single, "Mother Earth".
We're happy to see that A Tribe Called Red's precedent-setting, movement-building mashup of pow wow music and electronica, affectionately known as Powwow Step, is spreading out and being taken up in creative new ways by other Indigenous artists.
"Mother Earth" drops in at a more mellow tempo, but its rolling rhythm, open hi-hats, deep 808 kicks, and synth lines paired with a looped sample of women's pow wow vocals works perfectly.
MTV World's music documentary series Rebel Music kicks off its second season with the voices of Turtle Island's original peoples—the revolutionary sounds of "Native America".
What does it mean to be Indigenous in the 21st century? More importantly, what does it sound like?
These are questions we've been asking since RPM started and every day we see the evidence all around us. Native artists are everywhere—making incredible music, building community, raising each other up, raising awareness, and kicking ass.
And we're not the only ones who can see that Indigenous artists are the ones innovating, experimenting and leading the way forward. Like A Tribe Called Red's Bear Witness reminds us, "Our culture has always grown, our culture has always adapted. We're trying to get everybody else to catch up with where our culture is today."
Enter MTV World's Rebel Music—a Shepard Fairey-exec produced experiment in soundtracking the rebellious spirit and creative innovation of artists around the world who are driving political change by raising their voices in song:
The anthems of protest rise up in underground punk-rock shows in Yangon. Revolutionary hip-hop in the barrios of Caracas. Drumbeats in Istanbul street protests. The pulse of electronic dance music across Native American communities in North America. The soundtrack is global. And the noise is amplifying as youth connect with each other, onstage and online, and find their collective strength to ignite change for the future on a surge of sound and ideas.
After a globe-spinning circuit in its first season (now available on Netflix), Rebel Music returns with a whole new set of adventures in sonic revolution. But before looking out to resistances elsewhere, the show turned its focus to the lands on which America was founded, and the Indigenous nations and peoples of Turtle Island who continue their struggles to be seen and heard.
But, as we know, the conversation doesn't and shouldn't end there. The "Native America" episode comes fully loaded with additional digital content from across the NDN spectrum, including: interviews with A Tribe Called Red, clips of Supaman's now legendary "Prayer Loop Song", features on the 'Native Warhol' Steven Paul Judd, comedy crew the 1491s, photographer Matika Wilbur, and Lakota rock duo Scatter Their Own.
Which is as it should be.
For Indigenous Peoples, art, culture, activism, and resistance are inextricably linked. And our presence and music are here to stay.
Season 2 of Rebel Music premiered with "Native America" via Facebook and YouTube. Additional digital and educational content is also available at rebelmusic.com.
Late last night, on the eve before one of the biggest Indigenous mobilizations in history, A Tribe Called Red quietly released a new song, The Road, inspired by the Idle No More movement and the hunger strike of Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence.
The moody, minimal electronic track incorporates some of the traditional drumming and singing elements that ATCR have used in the past for their more dancefloor-oriented powwow step bangers. But this is something else.
The Road feels like the calm before the storm. A slow-building soundtrack for the dawning of a new era. With prayers and strength to Chief Spence, we give to you the sound of our people rising up and taking our spirits back.
Indigenous Peoples across Turtle Island have been dancing and drumming for generations but, in the 21st century, that rhythmic spirit is finding new forms of creative expression. In our tenth episode, the powwow gets plugged in, mashed up and remixed.
Our host Ostwelve asks three emerging Indigenous artists about their use and creation of electronic music.
A Tribe Called Red - the Ottawa-based DJ collective of NDN (Nipissing First Nation), Bear Witness (Cayuga) and Shub (Cayuga) - describe what they're doing in the clubs as a cultural continuence from the powwow, and that the two are not that far apart after all.
Using small digital electronics, Cree electro-cellist Cris Derksencan make her cello sound like a bass, a drum, or even seagulls. Hear how she's creating a new palette for the usually classical instrument and how being a musician is like being a jeweler.
Nicholas Galanin, aka Indian Nick, a Tlingit/Aleut visual artist and musician from Stika Alaska, likens contemporary Indigenous electronic music to our history as strong adaptive communities and cultures, and finds the mixing of electronic with other forms of music comes naturally.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, this revolution has been electrified.
The Ottawa-based Indigenous DJ collective A Tribe Called Redhas been creating an eclectic sound incorporating a wide variety of musical styles ranging from hip-hop, dancehall, electronica and dubstep, to their own mash-ups of club and Pow Wow music since 2008.
Bear Witness, DeeJay Shub and DeeJay NDN combine to make a unique brand of auditory madness that they've appropriately dubbed 'electric pow wow' or 'pow wow step'.
Their bi-monthly club night Electric Pow Wow, started in 2010, has been hugely successful.
We LOVE this remix of the classic Northern Cree song "Red Skin Girl".
STREAM: A Tribe Called Red - “Red Skin Girl”
RPM Records
Revolutions Per Minute is a global new music platform, record label, and boutique agency for Indigenous music culture. RPM’s mission is to build a visionary community of Indigenous artists and to introduce Indigenous music to new audiences across Turtle Island and around the world. Our main site, RPM.fm, has featured the work of more than 500 Indigenous artists and shared their music across our social networks of more than 275,000 followers.
RPM Records is the first of its kind: a label for contemporary, cross-genre Indigenous music, run by Indigenous people. Selected by The FADER as one of “5 New Canadian Record Labels The Entire World Should Know”, RPM Records artists include Ziibiwan, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Exquisite Ghost, and Mob Bounce.
