January 16, 2002

By JOSHUA BROCKMAN

ALBUQUERQUE — Nothing about the music of Indigenous reveals that its members are from a close-knit family of Nakota Indians. Although the band’s three 20-something siblings and one cousin started their careers as teenagers performing on the remote Yankton Sioux Reservation in Marty, S.D., they now play their rock and blues-infused compositions nationwide and have toured with B. B. King, the Dave Matthews Band, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt.

Mato Nanji, 27, the band’s lead singer and guitarist, said that the music in the group’s first albums, “Things We Do” and “Circle” (Pachyderm), was written for mass appeal. “I think if I wrote a certain way about certain things on the res it would tend to keep other music fans away from it,” Mr. Nanji said from his home in Rapid City, S.D.

Indigenous is one of a handful of American Indian bands that are touring the country and attracting mainstream followers with their rock, blues, reggae, hip-hop and rap — musical expressions that originated far from any reservation or pueblo. Yet the soulful, introspective and sometimes raw lyrics characteristic of these idioms are exposing new audiences to voices from Indian country, and not just from the reservation, but from cities as well.

“We’re more than beads and feathers; so is our music,” Keith Secola says. Cary Herz for The New York Times.

“We’re more than beads and feathers; so is our music,” said Keith Secola, who attended the fourth annual Native American Music Awards, or Nammys, held here last fall. Mr. Secola was honored for his album “Homeland” (Akina), the soundtrack for a PBS documentary with the same name, about four Lakota families on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Established by the Native American Music Awards Inc. in 1998, the Nammys provide a forum for celebrating Native American musical forms that have not found recognition in the Grammys, which are presented by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

The new Grammy category “is another example, I guess I would say, of stereotyping us and saying that the only qualifiable music for an award is traditional American Indian music either in chant or in group- chant form with a drum,” said R. Carlos Nakai, 55, the Indian flutist, who leads ensembles that perform everything from jazz and world music to New Age and who is a four- time Grammy finalist. “But when you look at the performances that were done here,” Mr. Nakai said after the Nammys ceremony, “then you’re also seeing that the genre of music that many of the indigenous natives were performing this evening, including my group, are in existing forms outside in the greater world.”

The possibility of expanding the Grammys’ Native American category (now part of the folk genre) is being discussed, said Michael Greene, president and chief executive of the recording academy. “I think our instinct now is to try to find a place for both contemporary and traditional music forms within the field,” he said, predicting that the Native American field will “grow, diversify and become more inclusive.”

With Indian musicians producing more fusion and world music, like Mr. Nakai’s recording “In a Distant Place” (Canyon), which features Tibetan overtone chanting by Nawang Khechog, these artists are steadily making inroads.

“All it really takes is two or three artists who find a way to really engage the public, and all of a sudden a whole other realm of music becomes interesting to the mainstream population,” Mr. Greene said.

Television has greatly expanded the reach of artists like Robert Mirabal, 35, a singer and songwriter from the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. He has attracted mainstream audiences with his album “Music From a Painted Cave” (SilverWave), which was also the name of a widely televised concert special used by PBS as a fund-raiser. The recording blends native language and instruments (some of which Mr. Mirabal makes himself) with rock ‘n’ roll, and represents “one man’s memoirs of growing up in Northern New Mexico,” Mr. Mirabal said.

“It was a theatrical musical production; it’s storytelling through songs, through music and dancing,” he said. “Basically it’s a modern-day ceremony.”

Other artists, like the singer and songwriter Annie Humphrey, 35, choose instead to perform exclusively in English, although many songs on her album “The Heron Smiled” (Makoche) overflow with Indian themes. Her musical vision is modeled partly on John Denver, and she has toured with the Indigo Girls, David Crosby and Jackson Browne.

With a voice that would make for a welcome companion on a long drive, Ms. Humphrey sings about maintaining connections with heritage and ancestry. Her song “Spirit Horses” is based on a story her mother told her about a boy who learns the tribe’s dream song and then uses it to conjure spirit horses: “Find us spirit horses/ And teach us how to ride/ With seven generations of promise/ At our side.”

“I do know that being an Indian isn’t romantic,” Ms. Humphrey said in a telephone interview from the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, where she grew up and continues to live. “I’ll go to the airport or gift shop, and the only music that represents native people is pretty flute music. That doesn’t represent who we are. There’s a big evolution going on.”

Ed Lee Natay was one of the first Indians to record an album of traditional Navajo music for commercial release and the first Indian to record for Canyon Records. His great- grandson, who is 28 and calls himself simply Natay, says, “I’m going to be the native Dr. Dre.” Natay’s latest album, “TNT” (Warrior/SOAR), which stands for True Native Thugz, is far from traditional, having sprung from his experiences as a gang member and serving multiple jail terms.

“He’s got the soul, still, of his ancestors, but he’s got the experience of what’s happening in this century,” said Tom Bee, 54, who was a producer of the compilation album “Gathering of Nations Powwow 1999” (SOAR), which won the inaugural Native American Grammy. “There’s Native American youth in all the big cities, and they can relate to what he’s saying as native brothers. But his music is not limited just to natives.”

Mr. Bee is also president of the Soar Corporation, an independent record label, and remains on the lookout for an eclectic mix of artists with mainstream promise, even keeping his eye out for an Indian John Tesh or Yanni.

The number of recordings by Indian musicians is growing, said Mr. Bee, with artists playing everything from rap to traditional genres.

“There are a lot of diamonds waiting to be polished,” he said. “You just have to kind of shovel through the coal.”

Read original article, which appeared in Section B on p.2.

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