Raven Chacon, Laura Ortman, and the Discotays Perform at One Flaming Arrow Festival

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The One Flaming Arrow Festival of Indigenous art, music, and performance blazes on.

Kicking off last week in Portland, Oregon, the inaugural One Flaming Arrow Festival is bringing an incredible array of contemporary Indigenous art, music, readings, film screenings, panels, performances, and concerts to the Indigenous lands of the Chinook/Multnomah peoples.

The brainchild of Demian DinéYazhi, Kaila Farrell-Smith (both of R.I.S.E.), and Carlee Smith, One Flaming Arrow launched a successful crowdfunding campaign this winter to bring together radical Indigenous voices from across Native america for a 12-day celebration of contemporary Indigenous arts.

The festival features a stellar lineup that includes:

  • Bat Vomit
  • Natalie Ball
  • Dylan Miner
  • Melanie Fey
  • Sky Hopinka
  • Shilo George
  • Jeff Ferguson
  • Laura Ortman
  • The Discotays
  • Brittany Britton
  • Raven Chacon
  • Katrina Benally
  • Amanda Ranth
  • Miranda Crystal
  • Almas Fronterizas
  • "Drunktown's Finest"
  • Burial Ground Sound
  • Grace Rosario Perkins w/Amberlee Cotchay
  • Melissa Bennett w/Elizabeth LaPensée & Allie Vasquez

In between the low-rider bike workshops, storytelling sessions, art installations, poetry performances, and an Indigenous Futurisms film night curated by Grace Dillon, the festival is also showcasing some of the finest in Indigenous music culture.

On Tuesday, June 9th, Diné experimental/noise musician Raven Chacon (of Postcommodity), White Mountain Apache violinist Laura Ortman, and the Diné electro-queerpostpunk duo Discotays will throw down at the Holocene. Event info is below.

The One Flaming Arrow Festival continues through June 14th. Check the festival program for the full schedule of events.

One Flaming Arrow offers stark and powerful evidence of the Indigenous artists at the forefront of the contemporary creative arts. May this year be the first of many to come.

Listen to an OPB radio interview on the One Flaming Arrow Festival

 

JUNE 9th: Laura Ortman & Raven Chacon Performance and the Discotays at the Holocene!

9:30pm-11:30pm Holocene: 1001 SE Morrison, Portland 97214 Join us on June 9th, 2015 at the Holocene in Portland, Oregon for Raven Chacon & Laura Ortman + Discotays. We have the honor of showcasing two award-winning multi-instrumentalists, Indigenous composers Raven Chacon & Laura Ortman along with the musical styling of Discotrays.

Tickets available here

DISCOTAYS (Diné) are a music duo from Navajo Nation, comprised of artists Hansen Ashley & Brad Charles. Their music has been adored by the likes of Kathleen Hanna and can be described as post-punk electro & queerpostpunk / queerpostsurf / queernowave.

Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) has performed with Stars Like Fleas, the Dust Dive & Silver Summit, & composes music for art installations & films in the form of the Dust Dive Flash. She plays violin, Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, musical saw & samplers. Ortman has created music for films by Martha Colburn & Indigenous filmmakers Blackhorse Lowe, Alan Michelson, & Raquel Chapa, among others.

Raven Chacon (Diné/Chicano) is a chamber music composer & experimental noise artist. Chacon is a member of the Indigenous art collective, Postcommodity, with whom he has developed multi-media installations that have been exhibited internationally. Both his solo work & his work with Postcommodity has been presented at the Sydney Bienale, Kennedy Center, Adelaide International, Vancouver Art Gallery, Musée d’ art Contemporain de Montréal, The San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, & Performance Today. Tickets are $8 in advance & $10 at the door. 21 and over.

Watch Raven Chacon, Live at End Tymes in New York City

VIDEO: Postcommodity's Futuristic Music

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Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary artist collective comprised of Kade L. Twist (Cherokee), Cristóbal Martínez (Mexica), Raven Chacon (Navajo), and Nathan Young (Pawnee, Kiowa). They have been working together as a collective since 2007.

All of the members of the group are musicians and have created work outside the collective:

Nathan Young has his solo project called Alms. Kade L. Twist is in a noise/drone band Usga based out of Phoenix, AZ. Raven Chacon has worked as a composer and performer in the West Coast and Southwest music scenes for the last dozen years.

Raven's work is primarily as a solo noise artist and chamber composer. He also co-founded the organization First Nations Composers Initiative  and has also performed in dozens of bands. Raven currently has collaborations with musicians William Fowler Collins, Deerhoof's John Dieterich, and pianist Thollem McDonas.

RPM speaks with Postcommodity about coming together as a collective to create sound art and perform experimental noise for audiences and what drives their work.  Interview and performance recorded at Museum of Contemporary Arts.

Postcommodity will have an installation piece at the upcoming ImagineNative 2011 and will also be doing a piece this winter for Toronto's Scotiabank Nuit Blanche.

Look for the new EP of Postcommodity on Anarchamoon Recordings called Your New Age Dream Contains More Blood Than You Imagine. Raven Chacon's label can be found at Sicksicksickdistro.

 

DOWNLOAD: Postcommodity - Excerpt from "Piles of Cougar Pelts"

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Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary artist collective comprised of Kade L. Twist (Cherokee), Cristóbal Martínez (Mexica), Nathan Young (Pawnee, Kiowa) and Raven Chacon (Navajo).

This group of musicians have been on the scene since 2007, joining forces to make sound art, experimental noise and installationworks.

Look for RPM's interview with the collective tomorrow, but for now here's a snippet of one of their live performances from summer 2011.

DOWNLOAD: Postcommodity- Excerpt from "Piles of Cougar Pelts"