With its seamless merging of powwow singing and electronic textures, Bizhiki's debut album sounds like nothing else before it.
Take the first song, "Franklin Warrior," which opens with gently growing synths and a single fragmented chord that pulses and wavers. The warm voice of Joe Rainey enters next, laying out the rising and falling melody, followed quickly by the steady beat of a deep drum.
Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings takes the same melody to the stratosphere, soaring above the instrumental where Rainey's voice floated along with it. The two were made to sing together, and the way Rainey's deeper voice complements Jennings' higher is key to Bizhiki's sound.
Jennings, a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, grew up powwow singing around the Lac Du Flambeau and Lac Courtes Oreilles reservations in Central Wisconsin. He was given the name Bizhikiins, "little buffalo" in Ojibwemowin, the source of the band's name.
Rainey, a Red Lake Nation band member, grew up in Minneapolis, and "Franklin Warrior" is dedicated to the unhoused Indigenous people living near Franklin Avenue in the city. Like Jennings, Rainey also has a deep history with powwow music, both as a singer and as an archivist. His Soundcloud is a living breathing documentation of contemporary powwow music, featuring over 300 high-quality field recordings.
His critically acclaimed 2022 album Niineta is likely the closest musical touchpoint for Unbound. Although a similar fusion of powwow with electronic elements, the albums are completely different. Niineta is more experimental, the vocals often distorted and the beats more industrial. Still, it is required listening in the still new genre and gives important context for Bizhiki's sound.
The third member of the group is multi-instrumentalist S. Carey, a lesser-known but vital piece of the Justin Vernon-led Bon Iver. His hushed vocals join the fray on the title track, singing "be calm when she speaks, she speaks the truth, unbound." Rainey wrote the line after a series of extreme weather events, the "she" in question being mother nature.
One of the album's most powerful moments comes in the Jennings-sung "She's All We Have," a simple call for land sovereignty and environmental justice. Carey, with help from Bon Iver saxophonist Mike Lewis, creates a somber soundscape over which Jennings sings in powwow vocables and English.
Another key to the success of Unbound is the care with which the different styles of music are paired. At no point does the merging seem forced — in fact, there is a clear exchanging of ideas that occurs, most notably in the drums.
Even when drum machines and electronics take center stage, the influence of more traditional powwow drumming is never far away. There are clearly hand drumming samples throughout, but it is beautifully difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends, what was recorded live in the studio and what was programmed.
The pummeling kick in "SGC," the hip-hop-influenced "Rez News," the powwow-trap that occurs halfway through "Gigawaabamin (Come Through)" and the beat switch that introduces the main melody of "Trying To Live" are all great examples of this.
On the latter, the crashing drums carry the justifiable anger over centuries of oppression and policies that have removed Indigenous people from their lands. Jennings and Rainey do not elaborate or get specific; the repeated refrain says it all.
"That's how it is
that's just how it is
they don't want us to live here
we're just trying to live."
Unbound is just that, a remarkable debut that builds on the traditional but is unconcerned with the rules of its presentation. Listen to KAXE all week to hear tracks from the album.
Must listens:
- "Franklin Warrior"
- "Unbound"
- "SGC"
- "She's All We Have"
- "Rez News"
- "Trying to Live"
- "Gigawaabamin (Come Through)"
- "Call Me Home"
