"I think people tend to forget that many of the founding blues and jazz artists were both Black and Native." "Black and Indigenous people have been in community with each other since the beginning, since Black Africans were forcibly brought here for slavery," jazz bassist Mali Obomsawin, who is affiliated with the Odanak Abenaki First Nation tribe, tells. And the pervasive invisibility felt by Indigenous peoples meant they had a point of commiseration with Black musical communities. In the back-half of the 19th century, the primordial stew of Black American music was percolating - the one that would give the world jazz, blues and other idioms. Works like 1845's Indian Melodies featured traditional Native tunes composed with European notation. This led to students composing Indigenous usic with those tools and methods. And with the arrival - or invasion, depending on who you ask - of European settlers came trade, fighting over boundaries and the introduction of European instruments.Īt mission schools, Europeans taught Native Americans to compose on European instruments. Since time immemorial, Indigenous peoples have developed an impossibly broad array of musical traditions.
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Photo: Gilles Petard/Redferns via Getty Images Considering The Course Of History In classic rock, you've got Jimi Hendrix and Robbie Robertson. Same with blues musicians like Howlin' Wolf, Charley Patton and Martha Redbone. Jazz household names Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk had Native American ancestry. This is despite the fact that all these genres have deep Indigenous roots.
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And othering those who identify and market themselves as Indigenous isn't exclusive to jazz.Įven though Indigenous peoples have been here longer than anyone, they face tension, discomfort and/or unadulterated racism in a slew of genres understood to be American - from country to blues to gospel to hip-hop. He's not alone: Many musicians of Indigenous ancestry in his circle - and outside of it - have felt the micro- and macroaggressions come fast and hard. "They expect that kind of back-to-the-roots, traditional type of music from anyone who uses the words 'Native,' 'Indigenous' or 'tribal.'" "That's one of the first times anything like that has happened to me," he says. Still, he can't get the incident out of his head. Read More: Meet Delbert Anderson, A Native American Trumpet Master Interweaving Navajo Melodies With JazzĮver good-humored, Anderson brushed off the harassment and tossed the necklace around his white bass player's neck.