✧ Native American Heritage Month Playlist ✧
The KCSB-FM Music Department is celebrating Native American Heritage Month! As students living and learning on occupied Chumash land, it is especially important to learn about and celebrate the traditions and living legacy of Native Americans in the United States. We have put our heads together to bring you some of our favorite music made by Native American artists.
✧ EL’S RECS ✧
“Ak’a Tamaani” – John Angaiak
John Angaiak is a Yup’ik singer songwriter, as well as an author and a painter. This album is gentle and quiet, including songs in both English and in Yup’ik. This song features only acoustic guitar and Angaiak’s voice, but still feels upbeat and cheerful– with Angaiak’s voice ringing clear and pleasant.
“Charlie” – Willie Dunn
Willie Dunn is native Canadian, but still a part of the North American indigenous community. He used his folk songs in order to protest social issues, including bringing awareness to problems that Native Americans have faced. This song in particular is about Chanie “Charlie” Wenjack, an indigenous boy who was at a residential school for three years. He died of hunger and exposure to the elements trying to walk 370 miles back to his home after escaping from his residential school. This song brought a lot of attention and outrage to this instance, and highlighted the problems with residential schools for many.
“Never Never Blues” – John Trudell
Classic rock with country influences underscores this track and John Trudell’s music as a whole, with the lyrics almost sounding like spoken-word poetry. John Trudell, in addition to being a music artist, was also an activist and was even the national chairman for the American Indian Movement in the 1970s. He focused more on his career as an activist after a suspicious fire killed his wife, mother-in-law, and three children in 1979 just a day after he burned a US flag on the steps of the FBI building.
“Red Dirt Boogie, Brother” – Jesse Ed Davis
Jesse Ed Davis was a well known Native American guitarist, playing with artists like Taj Mahal, George Harrison, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, and more, as well as having his own solo career. He was inducted into the Native American Music Hall of Fame in 2018, a few years after he had passed away. This track has a prog rock flair, in addition to a very clean cut rock n roll feel. Because of his proficiency with the guitar, this song has very clean guitar riffs and a very strong guitar-centric sound.
“Love Me” – Dark Water Rising
This track is a loving yet fierce indie rock song, featuring gorgeously strong vocals. Dark Water Rising is a Native American band from North Carolina, who have even received a Native American Music Award for “Group of the Year” in 2010. Although only having two albums, each contains an eclectic mix of rock and orchestral elements, in addition to having a signature early 2010s sound that invokes just the right amount of nostalgia.
✧ SARAH’S RECS ✧
While Link Wray is credited with creating the foundation of heavy metal and punk, this track is so tender and honest. Wray calls out the “ice people” who carry out racial discrimination which he himself experienced growing up Native American in North Carolina in the 1930s. The message of these lyrics is one that’s unfortunately timeless and its title rings true today with the current atrocities of the government’s “ICE people”. This track touches my heart and is simple, but so should be tolerance and kindness.
“Over My Head” – Cicada Hymns
This track is from Native American blues band Cicada Hymns based out of Taos, New Mexico and they combine this southwestern blues sound with something dark, heavy, grungy, and haunting. The guitar is plucky and emotive and the vocals have this atmospheric quality with harmonized humming. This track combines so many sounds of so many genres and is something wholly its own and unique.
If you have ever tuned into my show (Jazz Jazz Revolution) you will know I am a massive fan of flute and Burning Sky takes their traditional Native American flute and fills it in with strings and percussion creating a track that is both folky and funky. This is a lovely instrumental that is both soothing and grooving with that lovely lovely flute.
Jimmy Carl Black’s rendition of this R&B classic provides bluesy baselines and soulful vocals that make this track so fun to listen to. While most famous for his work in Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention and for his trademark line “Hi boys and girls I’m Jimmy Carl Black and I’m the Indian of the group”, his solo work leans more country-rock reflecting his Texan upbringing and Cheyanne roots. This track has a blues country feel which is transporting and addicting.
“Standing Alone” – Buddy Red Bow
This track is soulful in a folk, country western way mixing electric and steel guitar sound with traditional Native American musical instrumentation. Buddy Red Bow used the expressive musical form of folk/country protest songs and through this form expressed the concerns of Native American nations. He was one among the first group of artists to be inducted into the Native American Music Awards Hall of Fame and I can see why; this track is emotionally evocative, instrumentally unique, and absolutely shreds.
✧ MOISES’S RECS ✧
“Voiceless Mass” – Raven Chacon
In Raven Chacon’s composition Voiceless Mass is a haunting reflection on the basis of sound, space, and silence. Winning a Pulitzer Prize and written for organ and ensemble, this piece helps transform the area of the church into a place of reflection and confrontation of the history the church and other religious institutions have played in the erasure of Indigenous voices. The song seems to be empty and missing a couple of key things that make a song a song. It serves as a statement forcing the listeners to listen to the discomfort and remembrance of what the silence represents.
“Summertime” – Mildred Bailey
A mentor and influence to Ella Fitzgerald, Mildred Bailey was a groundbreaking Native American jazz singer in the 1930’s who paved a future for many different artists. In this song Summertime is very intimate in nature and captures both the ecstasy, agony, longing, and melancholy of the Gershwin genre. There is a deep feeling and emotion in the way she sings and the lyrics bring tenderness to how the heritage of jazz has shaped her soulful music and sound.
“War Drums at Dawn on the Day of My Death” – Blackbraid
Black metal artist Blackbraids blends guitar riffs and amazing rock vocals with the old influences of the natural world and “ancestral rage” in all of his tracks. This song in specific has a clear Haudensaunee identity and is rooted by channeling the nature around us, past and present community members and survival through mythic energy in the song. Blackbraid helps show the public that native music is not confined to any specific genre but can be any music we hear today.
“Witchai Tai To” – Jim Pepper
Fusing jazz with rock about a peyote chant being passed down from generation to generation created one of the most iconic and influential Native fusion songs of all time. Jim Pepper’s Witchi Tai To spreads and gives off warmth and transcends a human experience in a hypnotic and fluid feeling. The saxophone singing serves as a voice of healing that connects traditional ceremonies of Kaw and Muscogee heritage with the modern age jazz sound that still feels new every time it gets listened to.
✧ TED’S RECS ✧
Cool Summer was a local record label and concert promoter around Santa Barbara, the project of David Mount, who also managed local music heroes Gardens & Villa, for a stretch. Cool Summer released the first 7” by Oakland / East Bay Area Post-Punk / Goth group Crimson Scarlet. One band member was Jason Stoops, a fixture of sorts working at Warbler Records for a while. The record was produced by Adi Tejada, a local hardcore guitarist for Uphill Battle (Relapse Records), Stratego, and The Goleta All-Stars, who’s now playing Doom Rock (Sutratma) and Gothic Post-Punk (Rival Cults).
I’m placing this single on our Native American music list, however, because guitarist Chuck Franco is an old friend and a part of our community who stood apart in this scene because of his decades of flair, commitment to social, economic, and environmental justice, and zeal for living. Proud of his Chumash heritage, “Chuck the Punk” would participate in annual tomol channel crossings to Santa Cruz Island. He was impossible to miss in his youth because of the vertiginous punk Mohawk he cultivated atop his head, his studded hardcore leather jackets… all the punk regalia.
I got to do some activism with Chuck (traveling to SF in a caravan some 25 years ago, for a march for Mumia Abu Jamal), and spent time around the Pink Mailbox and Biko watching hardcore and punk performances, some of which he played, in other acts. Since he lived at the Pink Mailbox, we’d sometimes get to love on his striking hybrid wolf-dog Nanuk.
Eventually, Chuck moved to NorCal and was guitarist with Crimson Scarlet. I recall this group at the Mercury Lounge in OTG (where he’d DJ around the holidays, too), but I never got to see them. This is the one music project of Chuck’s that most stood out for me. It seems Crimson Scarlet was only together for about a half-decade, and Chuck departed before the group disbanded, relocating to Portland “where he produces concerts as Dark Future PDX,” now.
This track though, via an enhanced lyric video (link up top) captures a live performance. It’s something of a protest song, ominously pointing to oppressive “black box men,” while the victims have their fire stolen “from our flies… from our sun.” Fleeing to the hills, “which they can’t breach,” the song describes finding sanctuary in “the house that rhythm built… we’re only safe inside the sound… Sanctuary.” The song hints at resistance in the past, but also the present. “We still control the streets.”
Big ups to Chelsey Crowley on lead vocals.
Chuck the Punk is missed around here. Mad props to this local role model.
Blackfire was a Native American punk rock group from Flagstaff, Arizona, featuring two brothers, Clayson Benally, the late Klee Benally, and their sister, Jeneda Benally. Their musical style was influenced by traditional Diné (Navajo) music and alternative rock, with political messages about government oppression and human rights. In 2012, Clayson and Jeneda formed the band Sihasin.
I once got to see Blackfire, in 2005, play a free concert in UCSB’s Storke Plaza, and after they created a KCSB radio ID, but, sadly, that recording later was accidentally deleted from our station’s PSA library.
Ramones bassist CJ Ramone produced their self-titled debut EP, in 1994, and Joey Ramone contributed vocals to their 2001 debut album, One Nation Under, dubbing their sound “fireball punk rock.”
In 2003, they released a 7″, Woody Guthrie Singles (Tacoho Records), which came 5 years after the classic Billy Bragg and Wilco album, Mermaid Avenue; two Guthrie projects commissioned by the folk troubadour’s family, where some of his unproduced lyrics were set to new music. Woody lived from 1912-1967. He last performed in 1950 (at age 38) when Huntington’s disease forced his early retirement.
With the Woody Guthrie Singles, the Guthrie family / estate asked Blackfire to write music to accompany lyrics for two unfinished songs: the protest track, “Mean Things Happenin’ in this World,” and “ ̶I̶n̶d̶i̶a̶n̶ Corn Song.” The latter track seems like an ideal selection for Native American Heritage Month, leading into Thanksgiving (aka, “Thankstaking,” for some).
The strikethroughs correct an archaic framing by the Oklahoma legend (“Indian” being a term imposed from outside), but everything else about the song could be ripped from our contemporary headlines:
“I been a thinkin’ / How the rich man runs the land. / How he promised / He would help us, / If we put him / Into office / How he turned his promises around. / Big dictators. / Speculators / Senators / And Agitators…/ See what they can / Take off of us, / Take from me and take from you… / Workin’-man gotta / Take the groceries / Feed the widows, / Feed the orphans. / Pass the groceries all around.”
There is also a reference to effective Native agriculture practices — hence the title — but Guthrie’s, and Blackfire’s, allegiances are more than clear. (An antidote of sorts, too, to residual lyrical confusion surrounding Guthrie’s best known anthem, “This Land Is Your Land,” as some have asked, “whose, exactly?”).
Here’s to a better Thanksgiving 2025 than how the month has begun. “Pass the groceries all around!”
✧ NICOLETTA’S (OF HARDLY STRICTLY AMERICANA) RECS ✧
“Moteskano – Les Sentiers de nos ancêtres” – Laura Niquay
I really like this whole album (there’s a collaboration with Innu/Acadian rapper Shauit on another song), but I remember this one in particular resonated with me. Laura Niquay is Atikamekw and sings in that language, which in itself is a radical act. This song combines “folk” as people who listen to my show think of it and First Nations traditional music perfectly, and it felt like a good introduction to her music.
“Elk City” – Samantha Crain
It’s a sad song about runaway boyfriends, teenage pregnancy, and how a short trip turned into “forever” in a small town; Choctaw/American singer songwriter Samantha Crain nails it. It’s sad, but one of her loveliest songs (which is high praise!), and there’s hope (if only a ghost/beginnings of it) in the narrator’s daughter making it out to college.
“Grief in Exile” – Mariee Siou
“So gather the necessities, for a ceremonial life” Marie sings, a powerful entry in the canon of exile/wandering/roaming songs by Indigenous artists that also evokes tradition and the power in maintaining what culture one can. It’s also, simply put, an absolutely beautiful song, and the first song that got me into her music.
Amy Hanaiali’i is Indigenous Hawaiian, and I included this song in this set (and several thereafter) because of the shared experience of colonization by the United States. I love this version of the song, not only because a native Hawaiian singer is performing it, but because it feels closer to the original tone of the song than a lot of performances. Way too often, this is performed as a drinking song or as the “fun Hawaii” song. It was in fact written by the last sovereign Queen of Hawaii (who was also a musician and composer!), and has an association with the sense of loss and nostalgia that came with the end of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the US Occupation. Amy Hanaiali’i’s version resonates with that interpretation and performance style.