Album Review

A Tribe Called Red – A Tribe Called Red

• 5th Oct 2012

A Tribe Called Red is made up of Canadian DMC Champion DJ Shub, DJ NDN and Bear Witness. The trio has created its very own sound called “powwowstep”, which takes traditional native pow wow vocals and drumming and mixes it with electronic music.

The group’s debut album is quite simply unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. The amazing native North American drum rhythms and chants create a very different base to work from and the contrast between the traditional and the modern, the electronic components of the work, couldn’t be starker.

The opening couple of tracks, Electric Pow Wow Drum and Look At This are very traditional, before Northern Cree – Red Skin Girl brings more electric input. The rest of the album combines the two musical forms in varying ways and with some very different results.

Woodcarver was written in memory of John T. Williams, a Native woodcarver shot in the back by a Seattle police officer, and it uses sampled news clips to tell the story. The pace is markedly slower, the beat and sampled screams giving a dramatic effect.

Good To Go is perhaps the most modern sounding track on the album. It uses cymbals and electronic beats well, but I’ve got to say that after listening to the first few tracks I missed the native drums. I really liked Native Puppy Love. The chanting is back big time here and it contrasts with pulsing synth sounds to create a fast paced and dynamic sound.

The closing General Generations came through a collaboration with UCLA’s ethnomusicology department. It’s a reinterpretation using an early cylinder recording of singing from DJ Shub’s great-grand-father’s tribe.

This album isn’t for everyone by any means. But its reinterpretation of traditional aboriginal North American music is well worth listening to. The juxtaposition of tribal drums and chants with modern music shouldn’t really work – but it does. It’s bold and dramatic and anyone with even the slightest interest in world music should check it out.