Hip-hop turns 50 in 2023. ICT looks at some of the Indigenous artists across the nation who have been impacted by the music
JoVonne Wagner
ICT
Three time Native American Music Awards winning rapper Frank Waln sees hip-hop as a melting pot.
Waln, a Sicangu Lakota music artist based in Chicago, described his style of music as multi-genre but with hip-hop dominating his song stockpile.
He shared his own hip-hop awakening journey, saying that this style of music is an opportunity to share life experiences and culture.
“One of the beautiful things [about hip-hop] is it creates opportunities for cultural exchange,” Waln said.
As the nation celebrates the 50th anniversary of the birth of Hip-hop, music artists and consumers of all ages have found significance within the genre, relating to lyrics, recreating different versions of songs and most of all, inspiring generations to make music themselves.
From the Rosebud reservation in South Dakota, Waln shared how he was musically inclined from his childhood, falling in love with the classical genre such as Beethoven. He said even though he never learned how to read music, he would still memorize the sounds.
When introduced to hip-hop and rap, he loved it.
Related:
– Miracle Spotted Bear is stuck in between
– ‘He who walks through the battle smoke’
– ‘I was raised through music’
Waln saw hip-hop as a genre that gave a platform for sharing life perspectives, good, bad and ugly. It was an outlet for coping through tough experiences or circumstances that he resonated with.
In 6th grade, his teacher told him he was a great writer after their poetry lesson which was the type of validation he needed to fuel his passion. Shortly after that, Waln bought a beat maker from a pawn shop and started making beats and hasn’t stopped writing poems since.
“My brain’s just wired in music. I didn’t realize as a kid, I thought everyone, you know, looked at the world that way,” he said.
Now Waln lives in Chicago, where he graduated from Columbia College Chicago with his bachelors in audio arts and acoustics in 2014.
Waln shared a conversion he had with another rap artist friend in the Chicago area, PHENOM. Waln explained how life was growing up back on the rez, along with its challenges such as isolation and poverty.
“I was telling him, I see myself as a bridge between these two communities ’cause the South Side community in Chicago is definitely like a second home and they treat me like a relative,” Waln recalled telling his friend. “But hip hop was the tool, you know, and the culture that kind of introduced us to each other.”
Waln explained to his friend that many Native communities face the feelings of hopelessness, depression and suicide as a result of genocide and survival, something that PHENOM recognized.
“[I] told him about how our connection to culture and land, how we resonate with things like hip hop and that’s when he was like, ‘wow, that’s like the perfect conditions to create hip hop,’ and then I think he really got it,” Waln said remembering their conversation.
“Whenever you’re not appropriating or exploiting, but you know, you’re sharing culture, you’re seeing where the cultures meet and where they’re different. But you know, putting them together to create something new and beautiful,” Waln said.
Our stories are worth telling. Our stories are worth sharing. Our stories are worth your support. Contribute $5 or $10 today to help ICT carry out its critical mission. Sign up for ICT’s free newsletter.