BIOGRAPHY
COVER:
Thomas
King: Canada's Native Writer Tells His Story
BIOGRAPHY:
John
Trudell: Warrior-Poet Waxes on Bone Days
Margaret
Vickers: The Hand of Change
BUSINESS:
Casino
of the Rockies
Historic Milestone for Rambots Construction
CULTURE:
Grizzly
Bears Under the Gun - Again
EDUCATION:
A
Gathering of the Elders
ENVIRONMENT:
Government
of Quebec seeks to Divide Cree Nation and Foster Genocide
HISTORY:
Thomas
Prince: Canada's Forgotten Aboriginal War Hero
HUMOUR:
Bee in the Bonnet: Drum Beaters
POLITICS:
Civic
Aboriginal Leader First to Run for City Hall
John Trudell:
Warrior-Poet Waxes on Bone Days
By Ronald B.
Barbour
John Trudell, the archetype warrior-poet has just released
his fourth CD entitled Bone Days, which offers a jarring, steely,
glimpse at the gritty underbelly of the world through his sometimes cynical
eyes.
Trudell
is a humble man whose rich and colourful life has included a four-year
stint in the American Armed forces serving in Vietnam, front-line political
activism with the American Indian Movement and the subsequent bombing
death of his pregnant wife and children as a result of his activism, and
a twenty-year musical career that has had him rubbing shoulders with the
best in the business - with the likes of Jackson Browne, Jesse Ed Davis,
Jeff Beck, and Tony Hymas.
Trudell's songs, which he refers to as his art, are an extension of his
words and the process he goes through with writing starts with the concept
of the album.
"There is a process," says Trudell, "but part of it is,
I just write. Whenever it comes on me and I get these ideas, I write.
"Every album represents a concept to me. As soon as I know what the
concept is, then I start writing some things specifically for this particular
album. So part of it is that and the other part is that I just go back
and I find things that I wrote 20 years ago, or 15 years ago or 10 years
ago. And then I incorporate the old stuff with the new stuff and then
I'll go sit down.
"So when its time," Trudell says, "what I'll do is sit
down with whoever is going to make the music and we'll talk about what
kind of texture, what kind of feel, musical sound we want to have with
any given song. We'll work that out so maybe I'll sit down with Mark (Shark,
Guitarist) and say 'I'd really like this song to have some Hendrix /blues
feel to it or something.'
"And other than that, I don't try to get in it any more. I give them
that then they try to take the lyrics and usually we'll start off with
18 sets of lyrics and the 12 or 13 that can bring the music are the ones
that we end up using. We never write the music first.
"My feeling is that the music becomes an extension
of the words," says Trudell. "I use the words to express what
it is that I want felt and then the music becomes an extension of that.
So it's almost like that it becomes a part of that poem and then it becomes
a musical poem. That's been our system."
And the source for his songs is the world around him.
Crazy Horse, the opening track on Bone Days,
for instance, deals with the Indian belief that we are intrinsically connected
to the earth.
"One does not sell the earth that people walk upon - we are the land? How do we sell our mother? How do we sell the stars? How do we sell the air? … possession, a war that doesn't end…" (from Crazy Horse, John Trudell, Bone Days, on Daemon Records, 2002)
"I think we wrote Crazy Horse, well I wrote the lyrics to it in 1988-89, somewhere in that time-frame," recalls Trudell. "Well actually I wrote the lyrics for a project called "Oyahte" which came out of Europe, out of Paris, so I wrote the lyrics for that project … Jean Richard was producing it. He and a man named Tony Hymas (keyboard player, Jeff Beck Band).
"I wrote these lyrics and Tony and Jeff Beck made the music to go with these lyrics, so it was a whole different performance. So whatever agreements were made on that, were made on that, but I had these lyrics that I wanted to use within my own style. And so right around the beginning of 1990, we came up with the music that we have for it now, and we've been performing it live since then. It's just that we've never got around to recording it until now."
Native themes...for everyone
Although many of his songs are written with and around Native themes,
Trudell is quick to note that he writes his songs for all people - and
these days, with the world "being turned into an industrial reservation,
the next Indians are a different colour than us. The next Indians are
their own citizens," says Trudell.
"When Bone Days came around, I thought that what I wanted
to do with this particular CD is - I wanted to open it and close it -
Crazy Horse at the beginning and Hanging from the Cross
at the end. I wanted to open it and close it specifically around Native
themes.
" I wanted the opening and closing song to be straight,
up-front that this is Native. And everything in between, I wanted it to
reflect that it could be any person. The story that goes on in between,
inspired by Native but not limited to Native experience."
Growing popularity
Trudell's work has not gone unnoticed in Native American circles with
being awarded the very first Native American Music - Living Legend Award
given out in 1998, and then followed up in 2000 with Trudell's release
of that year, Blue Indians receiving three Nammys - Trudell winning Artist
of The Year Award, Song of the Year for the title track, and Jackson Browne
winning Producer of the Year Award.
Although all of his releases have sold relatively well overall, the movement
has been slow but consistent, without ever having a surge of sales with
any of his titles. With only his last foue releases being available in
CD format, Trudell is in the process of satisfying the cries of his fans
for the reissue of his earlier works.
"Next February will mark the 20th anniversary of the first thing
I ever released (Tribal Voice). We're going to take all six cassettes:
Tribal Voice; the original Grafitti Man; another cassette
with Jesse Ed Davis called Heart Jump Bouquet; another Tribal
Voice called …But This Isn't El Salvador; and then another
music one after Jesse died that I wrote with Mark Sharp called Fables
and Other Realities; and a children's cassette that I put out using
my daughters who were 9 and 10 at that time and I called that Child's
Voice.put all that together and release it as a little box set after
the first of the year."
On tour
Trudell and his band Bad Dogs will be touring Bone Days in Italy
and France in mid-July for a few weeks and will return to begin work on
his next release which he hopes to have out sometime in 2003.
As for Trudell touring Canada, he hopes to come back to the west coast
but it will depend on his ability to tour the album in North America.
"In the early '80s I spent a lot of time in Vancouver," says
Trudell. "I really like that area. But I've never been there with
my band. It's kind of like a little dream I have. Because the Native community,
when I was there in the ''80s, the Native community, actually the activist
community, they were very supportive of the issues we were involved in
so it was like having another family there.
"But the issues that we were involved in, they shifted
to the south and certain things, so it's been years since I've been back
up there. But I would really love to take my band up there. Maybe that
will get to happen one of these days."