Two things (other than previous listening) affected my song choices for this last Native American Heritage month: musically focused reading and anger.
One of those was the Robbie Robertson reading. You can see that The Band gets two songs, "The Weight" and "I Shall Be Released", because those two were the songs I liked.
The anger was at people tearing down celebrities claiming Indian lineage.
It made me want to bring in every artist ever attacked, but it would be easy to do that from spite, which is not the best motivation.
(You may also notice that Buffy Sainte-Marie has two songs, though partly that was that I started with her and then decided "Universal Soldier" would be a good fit for Veterans' Day.)
It also made me just want to go off on Indian identity. I am probably not the best person for that, white as I am.
But, Testimony was not my only rock reading.
I also found a graphic novel about the band Redbone, of "Come and Get Your Love."
Redbone: The True Story of a Native American Rock Band by Christian Staebler and Sonia Paoloni, illustrated by Thibault Balahy
One of the scenes has Jimi Hendrix coming to the band and telling them that only white people would believe they were Mexican. He can tell that they are Indian (there are some Mexican roots as well), and he has his own Cherokee grandmother.
I haven't seen anyone attacking Jimi's roots yet, but maybe I haven't looked hard enough.
Anyway, I am going to explore identity more in another post, in a cool and collected manner, but I did include some people that I had thought of including, and I will spend more time on them.
The biggest weakness that occurs to me now is that I really have not listened to enough Link Wray. I have used songs from him at other times, but I have not been doing anything more than casual listening. When I take an artist and listen to their entire catalog three times? I should do that for him.
(I could listen to Robbie Robertson more, but I could not go over The Band's catalog three times, and certainly not for when they were backing Dylan.)
Here are the songs:
11/1 “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” by Buffy Sainte-Marie
11/2 “The Weight” by The Band
11/3 “We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee” by Redbone
11/4 “Falling Rain” by Link Wray
11/5 “My Blood Runs Through This Land” by Black Belt Eagle Scout
11/6 “Star Dust” by Frank Waln
11/7 ”Soldier of Love” by Tracy Bone
11/8 “The Garden of Love” by Martha Redbone
11/9 “Hear My Train A Comin'” by Jimi Hendrix
11/10 “Light of Mine” by Mic Jordan feat. Jessica Vines
11/11 “Universal Soldier” by Buffy Sainte-Marie
11/12 “Honor Song” by Jeremy Dutcher
11/13 “Lemonadas Verde Cumbia” by Southern Scratch
11/14 “Tree of Woe” by Halluci Nation feat. Damian Abraham
11/15 “Book of Life” by Keith Secola
11/16 “Colonizer” by Tanya Tagaq
11/17 “I Got Paid Today” by Snotty Nose Rez Kids
11/18 “Keep On Living” by Arigon Starr
11/19 “Water Prayer Song” by Andrea Menard
11/20 “Meet Me At The Pow Wow” by Lightning Cloud
11/21 “Let 'em Know” by City Natives
11/22 “Drowning” by Natanii Means
11/23 “Land Back” by Halluci Nation ft. Boogey The Beat & Northern Voice
11/24 “Call Them Sticks Home” by Naca Charging Crow
11/25 “Not Your Mascot, I've Been Watching” by Michael Bucher
11/26 “(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher & Higher” by Rita Coolidge
11/27 “Believe” by Cher
11/28 “Something Beautiful” by Tina Turner
11/29 “Be My Baby” by The Ronnettes
11/30 “I Shall Be Released” by The Band
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