Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT
The latest: Indigenous rockers light up the Americana Music Festival, Los Angeles art is in the spotlight, and new grants LIFT up artists
MUSIC: Native rockers take over the Blue Room
The Americana Music Festival took over Nashville last week with award shows, panel conferences and more live shows than anyone could possibly see in a week.
Focused on roots music that finds common ground with country, folk, rock, and blues, it was a fitting setting for the Native Guitars Tour collective of Indigenous artists striving to promote Native music, art and fashion, support one another and advocate for Native representation, and economic development.
It was held at the Blue Room, a live music club in the Third Man Records compound owned by award-winning musician, producer and mastermind Jack White. The lineup included Mozart Gabriel, Taos Pueblo; Levi Platero, Navajo; The Osceola Brothers, Seminole; Sage Bond, Navajo; and more.
“Originally, I was asked to set the whole thing up by Josh Green, director of the Americana Music Association,” Gabriel told ICT from Nashville. “It was going to be a Native American Day Party. But then I asked Native Guitars Tour to get involved because they have already been doing so much. I couldn’t have done it without them. It was a very intense, stressful experience and luckily, they were guiding and mentoring me. They get me a lot of gigs and we’re a family, so it’s a big collective.”
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The bands rocked out, plus there were Native craft vendors and merchandise for sale.
“I thought the event really went well,” Gabriel said. “Jack White actually came to see the show. Everybody was excited. People said they had been looking for the Indigenous Native American music scene in Nashville, so it was good to have this representation. It meant the world to really see people find and hear Native Americana have such a new voice, and we’ve been a big part of it. We had hundreds of people there. We had a range of artists from new bands to those doing this for decades.”
One of the longtime artists performing was Platero, a Navajo blues rocker who has been active on the scene and winning awards since the early 2000s.
“Did you know he’s my cousin?” Gabriel asked excitedly. “It’s for real. We just figured it out a year ago. We’ve been dying to collaborate, and we probably will at some point.”
Another connection happened in the merchandise room where White sells all kinds of things from his bands and music. Gabriel spotted a black western shirt with yellow fringe that he bought for the whole band.
“I’m such a sucker for buying all the merch and all the collaboration that he does,” Gabriel said. “The shirt … was a Third Man, and you know what’s really crazy about that shirt? That shirt is called the Taos button-down shirt. I was like, what?”
ART: First Peoples art in the City of Angels
The rich lineage of Indigenous cultural art and craft in Tovaangar, known today as the greater Los Angeles basin, shines in “The Iridescence of Knowing,” an exhibition at OXY Arts that brings together a collection of works from diverse artists from multiple generations and varied First Peoples communities of Southern California.
The exhibition challenges the conventional boundaries between craft and fine art, and connect cultural traditions with contemporary art. It opened Sept. 14 and runs through Nov. 18.
Featured artists include Weshoyot Alvitre, Tongva; Theresa Ambo, Tongva; Jessa Calderon, Chumash and Tongva; Gerald Clarke, Cahuilla; Lewis deSoto, Cahuilla; Robert Dorame, Tongva; Katie Dorame, Tongva; River Garza, Tongva; Sky Hopinka, Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga; Adrienne Kinsella, Tongva; James Luna, Luiseño; L. Frank Manriquez, Tongva/Ajachmem; Leah Mata Fragua, Northern Chumash; Samantha Morales-Johnson, Tongva; Cara Romero, Chemehuevi; and Craig Torres, Tongva.
The exhibition is curated by Mercedes Dorame, Tongva, the 2023-24 Wanlass Artist-in-Residence, and Joel Garcia, Huichol, the Fall 2023 curator-in-residence.
Alvitre is a top-notch illustrator whose work can be seen in the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in New York City. Clarke created the giant basket art for Desert X this year, and James Luna has a current show at the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe.
GRANTS: Arts foundation names LIFT award winners
Fifteen artists were selected to receive a $10,000 one-year award from the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation in Portland, Oregon, aimed at providing early career support for emerging artists.
The LIFT award winners were selected from among 63 applicants by a panel of arts professionals and peers following a national open call for American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian artists to apply.
Following extensive research and strategic planning, LIFT refocuses the foundation’s efforts to expand the potential of emergent Native artists. LIFT includes financial support, professional development, evaluation, and communications and marketing support.
“It is essential that artists in these stages of their practices be provided the opportunity to improve their craft, build their careers and cultivate their place as creative people within their communities,” according to the website..
The winners are:
*Kalikopuanoheaokalani Aiu, Hapa, a māhū/bakla dancer, choreographer, writer and multi-media artist
*Jared Andreas, Agua Caliente, a painter whose surrealistic works explore themes of cultural identity
*Angelique Kalani Axelrode, Tongva/Gabrieleno, a filmmaker who creates experimental content
*Kyle “Hokona” Kootswatewa, Hopi, a practitioner of Traditional Ecological Knowledge
* Ayuthea LaPier, Blackfeet/Tlingit, an artist who works in basketry, commercial beadwork and ancestral cultural burning rituals
*Nanea Lum, Hawaiian, a multidisciplinary artist with community organizations in Hawai’i
*Agalisiga “chuj” Mackey, Cherokee, a singer-songwriter
*Kanani Miyamoto, Hawaiian and Japanese, an artist, curator and educator
*Alica “Sheyahshe” Mteuzi, Afro-Indigenous, who conjures Afro-Indigenous futurisms in her writing
*Golga Oscar, Yup’ik, a culture bearer and self-taught artist
* Mikaela Shafer, Hopi, her paintings tell stories of disconnection — generational, cultural, and spiritual
*Tomantha Sylveste, Chippewa, an Anishinaabe actor, playwright and musician
*Alana Tiikpuu, a non-binary Nez Perce and Navajo writer, director and animator
*Zoë Urness, an award-winning Tlingit and Cherokee photographer
*Ashley Young, a Tlingit songwriter
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