Legends ambitious but ultimately disappointing

Page 19

REVIEW

Legends: I Am An Eagles the fledging First Nations Music label's fifth release, a hefty double CD containing more than two hours of stories and music.

The recording company is a partnership between Wawatay Native Communications Society, based in Sioux Lookout, Ont. and two new companies which were established to recover lost funding due to government cutbacks.

The record label is a dream realized by Wawatay's past-president and Sioux Lookout's mayor-musician Lawrence Martin, a.k.a. Wapitstan. The resulting label provided Martin with the vehicle he needed to propel himself into the Nashville music scene while sidelining a handful of other acts.

The project is the brainchild of Scottish-born John James Stewart, who helps manage the Legends greeting card partner which became the inspiration for Legends the compact disc.

After single-handedly laboring through what must have been a massive selection process, culling from a plethora of material, Stewart found 10 pieces which are to his liking.

The legends offer a learning experience as illustrated in Cheecheeshikishee, which tells us to accept each other's differences, or to rise above the grief of losing a loved one, be they life-partner or a child in Letting Go and Brand New Little Person. A similar theme continues as it relates to the cycles of nature in Changing the seasons and it underlies Maheengun, which tells how the first wolf came into being. The U.S. military/settler expansionism in the 1870s is the backdrop for Buffalo Mountain and the Mule, which are as much oral history as they are folktales. They also reflect the vanishing race syndrome which is characteristic of non-Native romanticism.

Of course no legend menu would be complete without a trickster tale as presented in Coyotes Falls in Love.

The legends are recited by Six Nations Mohawk Blues man Murray Porter; next door neighbor Elizabeth Hill; Toronto gumshoe Bob Crawford and Ottawa actress Gloria Eshikibok.

The contemporary music component was pre-released on a 10-title CD called I Am An Eagle: Music From the Legends Project. The Legends band is composed mainly of Jay Vern, Lawrence Martin, Murray Porter, Bill Miller, Milt Sledge, Mike Chapman, and Danny Parks. They provide some top-notch backup and play four instrumentals on their own: Wenabeg, Grandmother, Ashtum and Midnight Strongheart, which is probably the strongest contemporary piece on the entire album.

Elizabeth Hill's vocals on Thunder Warrior seem a little tight, as if she is compelled to reach beyond her vocal range, but the song is full of Dance With Wolves warrior imagery.

Murray Porter's Indian Giver submerges itself in an angst that echoes permanent defeat. While reflecting upon the arrival of the first Europeans to our shores and the result rash of colonialism, the song has the remarkable ability of reducing the listener to a state of near total depression. (Not to be played in recovery centres.)

The most tasteful musical element is sadly the least represented. The traditional chants performed by New York City based notables, Pura Fe and Soni with Monique and Jenny; traditional Cayuga Women's Singing Society members Bestsie and Sadie Buck; and Mohigan musical Bill Miller all make brief appearances throughout. This important musical element is sadly as sparse as cedar trees on the tundra.

It is Stewart's ambition to preserve and share Native cultural values in story and song in the ultimate effort to help save a vanishing race. His hopes in targeting an all-ages global market, specifically North America, Europe and the Pacific Rim countries, is to help bring about universal understanding and respect.

Yet another objective in releasing Legends on an unsuspecting world is to access the educational system. In a convoluted way, considering that the original legends originally came from First Nations peoples and have been transcribed into syllabics or translated into Native and non-Native languages already, Stewart hasrewritten the legends and intends to have these translated back into First Nations languages.

The catch here is that Stewart holds the copyright on all the pieces he has tinkered with, both on CD and the greeting cards as well. In an effort to flush out the missionary interpretation imposed upon the original stories in the heady days of Euro-religious conversion of Native peoples, Stewart duplicates this interference by injecting his own interpretations into the material previously abridged and re-worked by other Europeans. It becomes a little sketchy as to whose legends are being told.

But, in an interview he reassures the heretics that certain Elders were consulted for cross-reference as well as permission to carry out his mission.

Legends lacks the simple charm of its more humble predecessors in the independent cassette market which were presented by Native story-tellers. Legends should not be completely dismissed despite its shortfalls as it does raise some pertinent questions, first regarding the copyright holding with respect to a little matter of appropriation, intellectual territory and property rights more so than financial opportunism.

But the label itself does represent an open door for Native performers to a very large market. Although this is a first-time effort, all those concerned will learn from Legends: I Am An Eagle, which is being distributed internationally by EMI/Capital Records.

(Brian Wright/McLeod (Dakota/Anishnabe) is producer/host of the two-hour Native music and issues radio program Heart of the Earth on CKLN 88.1 FM in Toronto.)