JOE RAINY
Joe Rainy is a musical artist from Red Lake Ojibwe, Minneapolis. His sound mixes powwow melodies with techno, industrial, hip-hop, dub, and noise. His music celebrates the sounds of the contemporary Native music landscape.
Your music fuses powwow melodies with techno, industrial, hip hop, and noise. What was the catalyst for you as an artist that brought your sound together?
The collaboration project between Andrew Broder and me, and really, where we came from. We’re from Minneapolis. Minneapolis is a special place, and we wanted to embody that with a different type of vibe in our music and with powwow and electronic production. It’s definitely been around in the contemporary Native music scene – blending powwow with different beats and melodies – but the way that Broder and I made it was to just do something in our own lane.
Who was an influential musical figure in your community growing up?
It would be the Native drum group named “The Boys,” and they still are a drum group. As a young singer – not even singing yet, just aspiring to be a singer – they were in the community. They were younger, so they were like older brother figures, who I still consider older brothers today. They were my biggest influence, and it remains true to this day.
This concert is titled Past + Future = Present. How do you look towards the past and the future within your art?
I look towards the past with my archive of powwow music. I look back on my teachers who have walked on to the next life. I look back and think how far powwow music has come, not only on the project that we did, but with the generations of singers that are still singing within their families. All the grandparents, their sons, and the grandchildren; those are three generations of singers. The grandchildren are starting to have kids now, too, so there’s another generation. So with the future, you look towards them. You look towards the new generations learning how to powwow sing or be a singer in their own community. That’s what the whole cycle is about, the past, the present, the future; it’s all about maintaining that cycle of knowledge between powwow singers.
M’LYNN
M’lynn is an indie-neo soul artist from Dallas and a proud member of the Cherokee Nation, enchanting audiences with her vulnerable lyrics and soulful voice.
How has your Cherokee heritage influenced your sound and you, as a neosoul artist - how do these two things come together for you as an artist?
I didn’t grow up on a reservation, but my grandma was always immersed in it, and she would take us to powwows when we were younger. But it wasn’t until I was older that I started to really embrace it, and I think that’s partly because I lived in Dallas. I think the spirituality of the Cherokee tribe – and really all Natives – is something that has always impacted me, and specifically the connection with nature. I have a lot of it in my lyrics, references to the sun and the moon, and being outside and in space, and how it all makes me feel. Especially because I’ve been on this journey of healing from a lot of the beginning of my life, and in this healing journey, as my music has transformed, that Native American spirituality has really impacted me and my lyrics.
You talked about music as a guiding light – in your creative process, do you let the music guide you? Do you always know what sound you’re going for?
I think for most of my life, I was drawn to soul music because I had done all this training, and I knew I wanted to do pop music. I did classical training and jazz training, but before that, I was writing songs and already knew what place I wanted to be. As I was learning music theory, I was drawn to [soul] because it was richer harmonically and more complex. Once I understood pop chords and the basics, I was like ‘Okay, what’s next?’ – I would always listen to music with my parents, we would listen to Motown and singer-songwriters like Carol King. My voice always had this quality to it; even when I was younger, it was there, so these worlds kind of collided. I don’t know if there’s a sound, per se, I think it just happens, with the chords I play, the knowledge I have, and the voice I have. What feels best to me is the sound that comes out; I don’t think it’s necessarily intentional. I think when you’re marketing yourself, it has to become this label, but I don’t really see it as a straight-ahead thing. It is what it is, and I think that sound will continue to change and grow as I change and grow.
How do you look towards the past and the future within your art?
I mean, I think even tonight, as I was performing these songs, a lot of them I wrote when I was a teenager, some of them I wrote this past year. When I’m performing, I want to internalize those feelings again, even though maybe I’m not that sad, or I’m not in that dark place that I used to be. Going through the set tonight, it felt like past, present, and future. I think that all of these songs are like little time capsules of each period of my life, and then playing live, it’s like we’re time-traveling.
DEESCO
Deesco is a Tongva Land-based queer and indigenous DJ and musical artist, bringing high-energy sounds to the LA area and beyond.
As a queer and indigenous person, how do these two aspects of who you are come together within your art?
I was really fortunate to be raised to not consider labeling myself as two spirit, queer, or any of the minority labels as a bad thing. I come from a community that has gone through a lot of ethnicide in the last hundred years, and we’re working on it. There are a lot of words I want to say, but I feel like I was born at exactly the right time in exactly the right body with exactly the right identities and the right mix of everything good, reflected back to me to be able to celebrate myself. I want to do my experience right, give it gratitude, so I can show other people who didn’t get the same love the right way, even if it’s for an instant, so that it can grow. I know it’s a little bit of a broad answer because you have to do your own self-work. My mom likes to tell me to beat to the tune of my own drum, and I think that’s the answer for anybody.
This concert is titled Past + Future = Present. How do you look towards the past and the future within your work and art?
By staying present. I think if you look too far in either direction, you’ll forget what’s already going on around you. You’ll miss everything good that you’re experiencing that’s supposed to inform your future, and I think you’ll miss points that inform the beautiful things you get to reflect on. Easier said than done, because I think all of us need a certain period in our lives to sit back, reflect, acknowledge, accept, and heal from whatever we’ve gone through or whatever was passed down to us, but the point is to continue it into the future. So the only way is to stay present.
ANGÈLICA GARCIA
Born and raised in El Monte, CA, Angélica Garcia fuses Hispanic and Chicano musical influences with alternative pop sounds to create music that is as contemporary and layered as she is.
Your latest album, Gemelo, was sung almost entirely in Spanish. Was that a conscious decision on your part?
Yes, it was very conscious. My previous album was about growing up in the San Gabriel Valley. I was trying give a photograph of the Chicano experience, especially coming from SGV, and I remember showing it to my family – the album artwork has a lot of family relics and stuff – and it dawned on me that I literally made this [album] for my family, and my grandmother can’t understand it. It just clicked with me, like I’m isolating a whole side of my roots and culture by not speaking or singing in that tongue. Spanish always felt familiar to me because my grandmother raised me, and Spanish was my first language. The first thing I learned were prayers, but I was always afraid to write in Spanish because it’s a whole different skill set. So I did challenge myself intentionally to communicate and express myself in Spanish for Gemelo.
How did you know when Gemelo was done and ready to be released?
It’s interesting, the last song to be completed was actually the very first song on the album, the song “Reflexiones”. The lyrics are saying like “between the reflections that are within lovers, it will heal,” and when I heard that, especially with how meditative it is — it’s like a loop or a chant — and I realized that was kind of the finale in a way, it was like the sum of the album as a whole. Expressing that in those moments of grief and despair, there is a tenderness and love present in those reflections, whether it be in our community, the people who love us, and show up for us. It can be hard to see when you’re in it, but it’s there. When I heard that, I was like ‘oh that’s actually the whole point of the album.
The exhibit tonight is called Past + Future = Present. How do you look towards the past and the future within your art?
I’m grateful for the past, and I love looking back and seeing my little punk self, and it’s been very cool to see how the voice strengthens. The future is a little bit more complicated, it’s a little bit nebulous, but if we’re talking about all-time existing at once anywhere, she’s probably already here, and I just don’t know it.
As The Broad enters its second decade in Los Angeles, it’s granted the ever-unpredictable and always optimistic question of “what's next?” The Broad's programming has continued to champion contemporary art and artists, and its presence in Los Angeles is more valuable than ever. As Los Angeles navigates its own uncertainties, Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me, reminds Angelenos of the unshakable power of staying and acting in the present.