Indigenous Survivance and Urban Musical Practice

Rapper Frank Waln and the DJs of A Tribe Called Red are gaining international attention for the way they mix Indigenous musical gestures with contemporary genres. While this creative practice is just gaining mainstream recognition, I argue that this music is actually a contemporary iteration of a longstanding tradition of urban Indigenous survivance through musical practice. This article employs close readings and interviews to analyze contemporary forms of bicultural musical expression by these two musical groups. Contextualizing these performances within a history of Indigenous expressive culture in the North American musical mainstream, connections emerge between contemporary popular music practices and earlier musical performances of the boarding school era. Reading these as iterations of Indigenous survivance, the article investigates not only how the cultural forms shape other kinds of American music, but also how the artists have acted as agents to shape cultural expressions and challenge stereotypes of Native music and musicians. The music Waln and A Tribe Called Red bring to audiences from stage extends from the voices of musicians from generations past who tell their own stories and, at the same time, co-construct an American story from venues small and large