DOWNLOAD: Boogey the Beat - "Mother Earth"

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.

After throwing down his heartfelt Live DJ Set for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women last month, Boogey the Beat has released a string of singles in supporting Indigenous women and female artists, including a hype remix of Tanya Tagaq's "Uja", the blasting, women's vocal-sampling song "Anishinaabekwe" and now his latest, "Mother Earth".

"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.

Download Boogey the Beat's "Mother Earth"

STREAM: Pura Fé - "Sacred Seed"

Legendary Taino/Tuscarora singer Pura Fé, returns with "Sacred Seed" the title track and lead single from her forthcoming solo album on Nueva Onda Records.

Pura Fé is perhaps most well known as the founding member of the Indigenous women's a cappela group Ulali, but she is an accomplished singer and an acclaimed songwriter in her own right.

Having recently been discovered by the Nueva Onda label in France, she has gained a whole new audience for her work—and a new group of creative collaborators.

"Sacred Seed", the lead single and title track from her new album, is a beautiful slice of Indigenous blues — a celebration of ancestral memory, sacred stories, and cycles of renewal. Pura Fé's vocals powerfully carry the stripped down tune into a piano and electric guitar-soaked haze of harmony. A soulful taste of things to come.

Sacred Seed will be released on January 27th and Pura Fé will be touring through France in 2015. Tour dates below.

Listen to Pura Fé's "Sacred Seed"

PURA FE TOUR DATES 2014/2015

20 Dec – Old San Ysidro Church, Corrales, New Mexico

4 Feb – Le Sonograf – Le Thor

5 Feb – Au fil des Voix – Paris

6 Feb- Théatre Denis – Hyères

7 Feb –  Centre Culturel l’Ellipse – Moëlan sur Mer

10 April - Scène Croisées – Chanac

11 April – Le Sonambule – Gignac

16 April – Café de la Danse – Paris

17 April – Centre Culturel – Bondy

24 April – Beautiful Swamp Blues Festival - Calais

Watch Sharif and Sacramento Knoxx's "From Stolen Land to Stolen Land"

Sacramento Knoxx and Sharif join forces and bring light to the intersections of our common struggles in their new video, "From Stolen Land to Stolen Land".

Resistance is everywhere. From Ferguson to Palestine to Ayotzinapa to Burnaby Mountain, and in many other struggles unseen, the theft of land and the dispossession and colonization of its peoples is coming to the forefront of people's consciousness.

Fighting back against these violent forces, artists are rising and recognizing each other—giving voice to the commonality of our shared struggles to get free.

Sacramento Knoxx and Sharif collab on this latest joint, echoing the need for actual decolonization and shouting out the BDS movement, while chanting: "Turtle Island to Palestine in self-determination / we'll replant every tree, rebuild every home / and until we see that day / our resistance lives on".

Here's their note on the track and the video: 

The foundation of this land is built on the genocide of indigenous populations and the enslavement of African peoples. Today we are still living under the echoes of displacement through constant state repression. Police are becoming more militarized and are increasingly escalating violence against communities of color. The same type of repression tactics that are tested on Palestinian populations, then sold and trained to our local forces.

​Let's connect different communities seeking social change by intersecting their struggles. We would like you to join San Francisco based MC and community organizer, Sharif, and Detroit based producer, musician and ​motion picture artist,​ Sacramento Knoxx in our premier of “From Stolen Land to Stolen Land”. It is also important to note the importance of our actions. We would also like to encourage all of our viewers to respect the wishes of the Brown family and not participate in Black Friday.

Watch it all the way to the end for a shout out to Fanon and Wretched of the Earth. Decolonize and rise.

Salute!

Watch "From Stolen Land to Stolen Land" by Sharif and Knockzarelli

STREAM: Aspects - "What You Get Now (ft. Ghostface Killah & Cody Coyote)"

This international hip-hop collab between Aspects, Ghostface Killah and Indigenous up-and-comer, Cody Coyote, brings out some head-knockin' ice cold battle flows.

Ottawa-based Indigenous hip-hop artist Cody Coyote's been making a name for himself since dropping his "Warrior" single at the height of Idle No More. He's been making moves in the rap game, opening for established acts and collaborating with some hip-hop heavyweights.

Likely the most prominent and hype of these collabs is his recent contribution to the Snowgoons-produced Aspects track, which finds Coyote holding his own to next one of the illest MCs of all time, the Wu's very own Ghostface Killah.

Listen to them burn it down in classic boom bap formation.

STREAM: Aspects - "What You Get Now (feat. Ghostface Killah & Cody Coyote)"

Get more of Cody Coyote's music on YouTube and Facebook.

STREAM: Blue King Brown - "All Nations"

Indigenous Australian urban roots crew Blue King Brown is back in a big way with their massive tune, "All Nations".

Lead vocalist Natalli Rize and her reggae and dubwise BKB comrades are set to release their powerful third album, Born Free, on November 7th and their latest single and video are already catching fire.

"All Nations" is an uplifting anthemic call out to all people worldwide to reclaim our freedom and to make what BKB calls "music for this movement, for the battle and the fight for People over profits, Justice over Greed, Freedom over Slavery".

"'All Nations' at its core is about people power", says Rize, "Calling out to All People from All Nations to recognize their power and reclaim it, use it, assert it in these times of shifting consciousness, a time of discontent with the current world system and paradigm". To this end, the band dedicated and premiered the song in support of the self-determination movement to Free West Papua.

BKB have built a huge audience for their socially conscious and politically engaged music in support of Indigenous rights and global struggles for liberation. And they've stepped up every aspect of their production and songwriting this time around: Born Free was recorded at the legendary Tuff Gong studios in Kingston, Jamaica, Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne, and Blue King Brown's own studio in Melbourne, Australia.

Capturing the sound of the struggle and the essence of what art and activism can do to inspire change, "All Nations" will have you waving the flag of freedom and singing along with a raised fist.

Stream: Blue King Brown - "All Nations" 

And check the video for this epic tune below:

DOWNLOAD: Impossible Nothing's "Mechadoom"

Skookum Sound System's Impossible Nothing continues his prolific output with this maximalist rework of MF Doom classics.

Impossible Nothing has a penchant for pulverizing samples into distorted recursive loops and new kinetic phrases. Here, he takes the mask-clad raps of the Vaudeville Villain, Viktor Vaughn—aka the inimitable hip-hop icon MF Doom—and wraps his vocals inside a kaleidoscopic blend of stuttering beats, science show snippets and souled out, glitched up samples.

DOOM is the gift that keeps on giving. His effervescent flow seems endlessly appropriate to appropriation—and Impossible Nothing's recombinant maximalism works wonders on the high priest of abstract rap science.

"Golly, he's just a pest and your worst best friend Who mend and rip space time fabric like polyester blend" 

Stream: Impossible Nothing - "Mechadoom" 

(and get the full album as free download at: impossiblenothing.bandcamp.com)

STREAM: Native North America, Revolutionary Recordings by Indigenous Artists from 1966-1985

Light in the Attic Records is preparing to release the "most ambitious and historically significant project" in the label's history: Native North America—a 34-track compilation of music from the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, recorded between 1966 and 1985.

Native North America is a project that has been more than a decade in the making.

DJ and record collector Kevin "Sipreano" Howes spent 12 years researching, compiling music, travelling, and interviewing Indigenous artists for inclusion on the album, and the results are righteous, revolutionary and historically unprecedented.

Native North America (Vol. 1) features music from the Indigenous peoples of Canada and the northern United States, recorded in the turbulent decades between 1966 to 1985. It represents the fusion of shifting global popular culture and a reawakening of Aboriginal spirituality and expression...You’ll hear Arctic garage rock from the Nunavik region of northern Quebec, melancholy Yup’ik folk from Alaska, and hushed country blues from the Wagmatcook First Nation reserve in Nova Scotia. You’ll hear echoes of Neil Young, Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Johnny Cash, and more among the songs, but injected with Native consciousness, storytelling, poetry, history, and ceremony.

Indigenous music, like Indigenous Peoples more generally, occupies both a historical and present blind spot in settler society's consciousness.

But far from being mythic, imaginary figures of some forgotten colonial past, Native North America (Vol. 1): Aboriginal Folk, Rock, and Country 1966–1985 documents the deep currents of creativity that have been continuously at work throughout Turtle Island and the wide-ranging influences and styles of Indigenous musicians.

Notably, many of these songs haven't been heard outside of local communities since they were first recorded. Howes explains:

“All 34 songs blow my mind in one way or another. They were often made for folks in their regional communities, but like musicians the world over, most were hoping that their songs would be able to reach as many people as possible. [But] much of this music wasn’t heard outside of the greater Aboriginal music community at the time of release…[although] this music was very much embraced on the reserves and in regional communities across the country, as well as gaining some traction in coffeehouses, dance halls, and the folk festival circuit.”

The album reflects a diverse musical and cultural geography: gathering music from Indigenous Peoples across Canada, north to Alaska, and covering everything from folk and psychedelia, to country soul and garage rock.

"When I first heard the original recordings featured on NNA V1", Howes explained to The Stranger, "I had to learn more about these records, how they were made and by who. These artists should take their righteous place in our collective cultural history."

Indigenous musicians, who are rarely recognized (let alone celebrated) for their artistry and collective contribution to the evolution of recorded music, deserve to take up this rightful place—and Native North America captures the continued currents of Indigenous "consciousness, storytelling, poetry, history, and ceremony" that have been encoded in song.

This music is as much about our collective past as it is our collective present: and, to paraphrase Vine Deloria, we need to hear where we have been before we see where we should go, we need to know how to get there, and we need to have a good soundtrack for our journey.

Native North America (Vol. 1): Aboriginal Folk, Rock, and Country 1966–1985 — FULL TRACK LIST:

1. Willie Dunn – "I Pity the Country" 2. John Angaiak – "I'll Rock You to the Rhythm of the Ocean" 3. Sugluk – "Fall Away" 4. Sikumiut – "Sikumiut" 5. Willie Thrasher – "Spirit Child" 6. Willy Mitchell – "Call of the Moose" 7. Lloyd Cheechoo – "James Bay" 8. Alexis Utatnaq – "Maqaivvigivalauqtavut" 9. Brian Davey – "Dreams of Ways" 10. Morley Loon – "N'Doheeno" 11. Peter Frank – "Little Feather" 12. Ernest Monias – "Tormented Soul" 13. Eric Landry – "Out of the Blue" 14. David Campbell – "Sky-Man and the Moon" 15. Willie Dunn – "Son of the Sun" 16. Shingoose (poetry by Duke Redbird) – "Silver River" 17. Willy Mitchell and Desert River Band – "Kill'n Your Mind" 18. Philippe McKenzie – "Mistashipu" 19. Willie Thrasher – "Old Man Carver" 20. Lloyd Cheechoo – "Winds of Change" 21. The Chieftones (Canada’s All Indian Band) – "I Shouldn't Have Did What I Done" 22. Sugluk – "I Didn't Know" 23. Lawrence Martin – "I Got My Music" 24. Gordon Dick – "Siwash Rock" 25. Willy Mitchell and Desert River Band – "Birchbark Letter" 26. William Tagoona – "Anaanaga" 27. Leland Bell – "Messenger" 28. Saddle Lake Drifting Cowboys – "Modern Rock" 29. Willie Thrasher – "We Got to Take You Higher" 30. Sikumiut – "Utirumavunga" 31. Sugluk – "Ajuinnarasuarsunga" 32. John Angaiak – "Hey, Hey, Hey, Brother" 33. Groupe Folklorique Montagnais – "Tshekuan Mak Tshetutamak" 34. Willie Dunn (featuring Jerry Saddleback) – "Peruvian Dream (Part 2)"

STREAM: NATIVE NORTH AMERICA - VOL. 1

Native North America is currently available for pre-order and will be released November 25, 2014.

PREMIERE: Stream Silver Jackson's New Album "Starry Skies Opened Eyes"

Silver Jackson's remarkable new album, Starry Skies Opened Eyes, bursts with life and an artful spirit of experimentation. Welcome to the future-now sounds of Indigenous expansion.

Silver Jackson is the musical alias of multi-talented Tlingit/Aleut artist Nicholas Galanin, whose recent adoption into the rising art and music collective known as the Black Constellation represents both a bold progression of the "expanding now" he is developing alongside his interstellar kin—Shabazz Palaces, Erik Blood, THEESatisfaction, OC Notes, Nep Sidhu, Khalil Joseph and Maikoyo Alley-Barnes—and an emergent model of creative collaboration and community.

Starry Skies Opened Eyes, Jackson's second album, is an effortless evolution of his style and aesthetic, where electronic-inflected, acoustic folk experiments abound with clever melodic turns and spiralling harmonies, fading and swimming through percussive clicks, crackles, and looping rhythms.

Recorded over a three year period that saw Jackson narrowly escape death in a hunting accident, the album traces his path to newfound perspectives "on life through love and gratitude...friends and family".

Starry Skies Opened Eyes is a record of resonance, transformation and re-emergence—of Jackson "losing [himself] in the blackness between light", drifting through dark horizons, reflecting the sky. This introspective illumination unfolds in a dream-like flow of cosmia, echoing out over the album's 11 tracks.

From the ambient swirl of the album's title track, "Starry Skies Opened Eyes", to the implicit critique of colonialism expressed in "Lanáalx" (the Tlingit word for "wealthy"), Starry Skies Opened Eyes is suffused with a restless spirit of interconnected being. Jackson traverses the shifting sonics of this polyvocal landscape with melodic dialogue textured by a host of collaborators, including Samantha Crain, OCnotes, Benjamin Verdoes, Jesse Hughey, Erik Blood, and Catherine Harris-White.

As the album's loping, final track "From Another World" arrives, with the hopeful prose of guest vocalist THEESatisfaction's "Cat" (Harris-White), it becomes clear that this is "rugged unexplored terrain / yet the rain still washes it anew".

Starry Skies Opened Eyes is a brilliant addition to the expanding universe of the Black Constellation and a bright spark in dark times. It is the sound of a future-now, where Indigenous presence is an act of creation, continually being renewed.

Stream Silver Jackson's "Starry Skies Opened Eyes"

Starry Skies Opened Eyes is available for pre-order now and will be officially released on November 14, 2014.

Pat Boy: Mayan Rap is Bringing the Culture Back

All over the globe, Indigenous MCs and hip-hop artists are using the furious force of rhymes to express, represent and revitalize their original languages and cultures. And Mayan MCs, like 22-year-old Pat Boy, are no exception.

For Pat Boy and other artists building the burgeoning Mayan hip-hop scene in the Yucatán Peninsula, rap is a way to bring Indigenous language and culture to a wider audience and for Mayan artists to recover a deeper sense of their own indigeneity. "Through rapping in Maya," Pat Boy says,  "I better understand my culture".

The Indigenous music renaissance is making it not only acceptable, but cool for native artists to represent themselves and their culture — and the resurgent wave is spreading beyond Turtle Island. By Pat Boy's count, at least 40 rappers are following in his footsteps—and people of all ages are coming to his shows. As he stated in a recent interview, "Old people like it for the language. Young people like it for the genre."

Rap keeps bringing it back. "Interviews tell us that 'the Maya collapsed'", he says, "which is a lie because the Mayans are here, just evolved and doing new things".

To get a better sense of where he's coming from and why is music is resonating so deeply with his audience and fellow Natives, we did a quick google translate of a Spanish-language interview Pat Boy recently did with VICE Mexico (so excuse the crude algorithmic translation) where he talks about his introduction to hip-hop and how the community has responded to his music:

INTERVIEWER: Hi, Pat Boy, you come from a community where the Mayan language is spoken, what was your first introduction to hip-hop? Pat Boy:  Yes, the Mayan language is the first thing you learn as a child, I am native of my native José María Pino Suárez. My first approach to hip-hop was thanks to my brother, as he traveled to complete his studies in Felipe Carrillo Puerto, and every time he returned to my village he had CDs and videos of singers like Kinto Sol, Akwid, Control Machete, Vico C and rappers from abroad like 50 Cent, Lil Jon, Cam'ron, Lil Wayne, etc.. From there we started rapping and writing our own songs, then bought a computer from the old ladies in which you could only record 60 seconds and so we started making our own rolas rapping in Spanish.

And where does the name Pat Boy come from? From the Pat out of my last name, which in Mayan means to shape something or create something new.

What did people in your community think when you told them you wanted to be a rapper? Many people laughed at me and made ​​fun of what I was doing, said I had nothing to do, that I would not get anywhere, but at that time they had not heard what I sang. Now when I took my first album, titled In Ya'ax xin baal, my people began to identify with the phrases of a song called "U kuxtáal mayaoob" (Maya lives), which speaks of the current life of the campesinos.

Read the rest of the interview (original in Spanish)

With a legion of fans, and inspiring his fellow Natives to reclaim their culture, Pat Boy seems an appropriate ambassador for hip-hop as a revitalizing force:

my songs tell a little of everything, of me and what I see happening every day, how life changes in Mayan villages technology, pollution and acculturation. I talk about peasant life, how we have to get up early to go to work in the fields, go out and find other ways to live because the land no longer gives crops. I also sing about the holidays, customs of each people, always encouraging young people to do something positive. Tell them all we can achieve what ever we want and when we work and maintain humility, respect and peace. Anywhere you go you should not forget where you come from, your people and blood in your veins.

At 22, Pat Boy is already three albums deep, has multiple videos posted on his YouTube channel, and his SoundCloud is constantly being updated with new joints. We've highlighted the video for a feel-good crew track "DECIRTE TODO", which features El Maya & El Poeta & Victor Santo Barrio, and a recent Clipse-style minimalist rap track "PLASMANDO MIS RIMAS" that's available as a free download.

Hip-hop is the force, Indigenous experience is the spirit. And through both we keep revitalizing ourselves, one beat at a time.

DOWNLOAD: PAT BOY - "PLASMANDO MIS RIMAS"

WATCH: PAT BOY - "DECIRTE TODO"

WATCH PAT BOY INTERVIEW + FREESTYLE IN MAYAN:

Listen to City Natives' new album Red City

Rising east coast hip-hop crew City Natives are back with Red City, a new album of aggressive and confident hip-hop.

Following the swagger and sway of their potent 2013 debut, 4 Kingz, the quartet of MC/producers Beaatz, IllFundz, Gearl and BnE return with a continuation of their established artistic vision: to bring back the boom bap of 90s-era hip-hop classics and spin it effortlessly forward into 21st century stories of struggle and survival.

Red City storms through your speakers over ten tracks of rap bravado.

As the seamless pass-and-trade verses of the four MCs lock into position against a sonic backdrop of triumphant loops and memorable hooks, City Natives call out haters, celebrate their ascendance, and claim dominance over all rivals and competition.

With production duties on the record expertly handled by Beaatz, Juliano, and Grant Keddy, Red City paints a vibrant portrait of the living spirit of Indigenous hip-hop claiming its rightful place in the present.

STREAM: City Natives - "Red City"

STREAM: Princess Nokia - "YAYA"

Rising experimental hip-hop artist Princess Nokia drops an electro-rap dedication to her Taíno roots and ancestry.

Falling somewhere between the melodic song-rap of Santigold and the electronic world mashups of M.I.A., this is the first Brooklyn hip-hop artist that I've come across to represent for the Taíno — the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and Greater Antilles — and she does it with fire and passion.

Produced by beatsmith Paul Devro, Princess Nokia describes "YAYA" as a direct line of connection and inspiration from her Indigenous heritage:

"Yaya" is the Taino word for Great Spirit. This Song is dedicated to my Taino ancestry and indigenous upbringing. The Taino People were the original inhibitors of the Caribbean and Greater Antilles (present day Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Haiti & Jamaica)

"YAYA" interrogates colonialism while marking a personal journey to recuperate her warrior bloodline. As she astutely observes, "history can tell you something / but they're always lying". The journey to recover and rediscover the lineage of forgotten indigeneity runs deep. And it produces dope music in the process.

Princess Nokia has been on a run lately. Her audacious debut full-length album, Metallic Butterfly, is a firestorm of sonic and lyrical experimentation that depicts a unique world "where hood rats, cyborgs, political revolutionaries, and spiritual mystics are one in the same". The record is amazing (listen to it here) and it's being hailed as "one of the most exciting and ambitious independently released albums to come out of the New York underground in a long time". With massive love being showered on her work, and an upcoming performance scheduled at the powerhouse Afropunk Festival in New York City later in August, Nokia is fast becoming one to watch.

STREAM: Princess Nokia - "YAYA"

DOWNLOAD: Impossible Nothing - "Buckin'"

The many sonic and aesthetic incarnations of Impossible Nothing find their latest expression in this hype new instrumental track.

Darwin Frost, aka Bishop, aka X-Man, aka D'arcy aka Impossible Nothing, is a prolific producer and Skookum Sound System member, who is continually releasing new music representing his unique brand of what he calls hip-hop #Maximalismmmmmmmm. And this latest joint, "Buckin'" is no exception.

A recombinant soundclash of disparate elements, "Buckin'" brings together Donell Jones, Araab, Paparazzi Pone and Vic Damone in a cryptic looping electic beatscape of neck-breaking goodness. Get into it.

DOWNLOAD: Impossible Nothing - "Buckin'"