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He says a theme running through many pieces in the exhibit is claiming space, like a slow-and-low moving low-rider.
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Metis artist Dylan Miner made them with indigenous youth. They’re tricked out with painted hides and hand drums. In another room, four low-rider bicycles represent the four directions. LANCTOT: How the desert, and the relationship to the desert, and how time is suspended and becomes something different in the desert. It’s a meditation on expansiveness and disorientation in the American Southwest desert. Museum curator Mark Lanctot says it’s the work of Navajo artist Raven Chacon. There’s a photo of Marianne Nicholson tagging a cliff in her coastal British Columbia tribe’s territory with a traditional shield – bright red paint on granite rock, symbolically reclaiming land colonists took more than a century ago.Īnd in the just-plain cool department, walk through a non-descript door into a pitch-black mirrored room, where a strobe light triggers a bass blast that rumbles in your body. Skateboards turned into snowshoes, turntables carved from wood, “indigenized” iPods made of felt. You see that cultural migration between city and reserve – known as “the churn” – in Beat Nation. Hip Hop also filtered into native culture as young people left isolated, poverty-stricken reserves for Canada’s city streets. WILLARD: We sort of talk about Beat Nation as, not just electronic beats, but also the drum beat and the heart beat. Tania Willard says the hip hop beat fits naturally into the indigenous worldview. Hip hop blew up in Vancouver’s huge native community in the 1990s and 2000s, spawning groundbreaking MCs, like Manik 1derful and his track, "Occupy and Multiply".
NAJAVO HIP HOP ARTIST NUTANI MEANS PLUS
WILLARD: Hip Hop was just making inroads in mainstream culture and here was this all-native breakdance crew - this is 20 plus years ago – who are touring around the pow-wow circuit. She saw breakdancers at a traditional pow wow. Willard says she first made a connection between native culture and hip hop when she was 16. She co-founded Beat Nation and curated the travelling exhibit with Vancouver curator Kathleen Ritter. WILLARD: ‘Waiec!’ That’s a greeting in my language. In another room, Kevin Lee Burton sliced and diced his native Cree language into a sort of rap.īeat Nation was born in Vancouver in 2006 as an online gallery. Listen closer to the sounds, and you’ll hear stories filtered through hip hop’s lens.ĭJ and VJ madeskimo mixes traditional throat singing with electronic beats and footage of “Hollywood Indian” stereotypes "Dubyadubs". It’s always changing, always takes from other cultures. LANCTOT: How aboriginal culture isn’t a monolithical, single, static entity. It also represents the diversity of being indigenous today. He says this sonic soup follows you throughout the exhibit. Mark Lanctot is a curator here at the Musee d’Art Contemporain in Montreal. LANCTOT: The idea behind hip hop is the idea of a mix. A pow wow chant echoes from another room. “Beat Nation – Hip Hop as Indigenous Culture” greets you with a red neon glow and a ping-pong of sounds. Heritage Mythologies / by Jackson 2bears 2010 from Jackson 2bears on Vimeo. Video: "Heritage Mythologies," Jackson 2bears After very successful runs in Ottawa, Vancouver, and Toronto, "Beat Nation" is at the Museй d'art contemporain in Montreal through January 5, 2014.Īs David Sommerstein reports, the exhibit coincides with the growth of Idle No More, the indigenous political movement in Canada. They use beats, graffiti, street smarts, humor, and politics to challenge stereotypes. "Beat Nation: Hip Hop as Indigenous Culture" features more than two dozen artists offering their takes on what it means to be indigenous today. A new exhibit fusing hip hop and native culture has become somewhat of an art sensation in Canada.