Mni Sota

Native Music Series

July 2021

Premiered on The Cedar Public Access Channel every Thursday of July, 2021, 7:30 pm CDT

July 8 - Keith Secola

July 15 - The Wake Singers

July 22 - Corey Medina & brothers

July 29 - Artist Showcase Hosted by Keith Secola

The Cedar Public Access Channel is an online stream that presents creative content planned and produced by artists in collaboration with The Cedar. You can tune in through The Cedar’s Facebook or YouTube.

All programs will be available for free with a suggested donation to cover the costs of the program. All artists will be paid. You can make a donation to The Cedar at https://thecedar.org/donate.

 

Mni Sota Native Music Series

We are excited to present the Mni Sota Native Music Series featuring Keith Secola, The Wake Singers, and Corey Medina along with several collaborating artists. For over 10 years, The Cedar has run an Indigenous Music Series funded by the Rosemary and David Good Family Foundation which presented Indigenous artists from around the world performing traditional music styles from their respective countries. This year we are using this funding to support a virtual series presenting Native artists from across Minnesota, Arizona, and South Dakota that have either played at The Cedar before or were connected with us over the past year.

As The Cedar starts to prioritize racial justice within the organization, we wanted to highlight Native artists of the United States through the Mni Sota Native Music Series. This series is a four-part program that will take place throughout July 2021.

Native musicians are regularly excluded from music performance opportunities. While the Mni Sota Native Music Series is a start, it is by no means comprehensive and we have much work to do. The highlighting of these artists is long overdue, particularly given The Cedar's proximity to the historically Native neighborhood in East Franklin Minneapolis and of course the Dakota land (also home to Ojibwe, Ho-Chunk and many other Nations) on which The Cedar resides.

The motivation for this series also stems from the Artist Collective: a group of six BIPOC artists who curate shows for The Cedar and advise us on our programming. During 2020, The Cedar was fortunate to have Alex Buffalohead as a member of the Artist Collective. As COVID-19 complicated the curation of live shows, Alex’s project shifted to conducting interviews with various Native artists and Cedar staff so we could learn how to better engage this community. The feedback we received helped determine the necessity of this Mni Sota Native Music series.

We are grateful to have Alex Buffalohead help curate and advise us on this project. The artists themselves play an important role, too, as we aim to present them in their own words and perspectives. We want to acknowledge this and honor the creativity that is being brought to The Cedar. After consulting with the artists involved and Alex as the curator, we decided to name it the Mni Sota Native Music Series. “The name of this series is inspired by acknowledging where The Cedar is, in Minnesota,” says Alex Buffalohead. “Some might know or not that Minnesota is a Dakota word, stemming from the name ‘Mni Sota Makoce.’ My grandpa shared with me that this name translates in English to the experience of seeing the reflection of the clouds in the water from Lake Minnetonka. I want to acknowledge that there have been many before me and others who are contributing to language revitalization of Native languages, and one place to start with this knowledge sharing is with learning the names of places we live and visit and where these names come from.”

This Mni Sota Native Music Series will present a variety of Native artists on The Cedar Public Access Channel over the month of July. This is part of a greater commitment to increase our presentation of Native artists at The Cedar in the future.

THE ARTISTS

Keith Secola is an icon and ambassador of Native music. He is one of the most influential artists in the field today. Rising from the grassroots of North America, he is a songwriter of the people. Critics have dubbed him as the Native versions of both Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. NDN Kars (Indian cars), his most popular song is considered the contemporary Native American anthem, achieving legendary status and earning him a well deserved cult following. It has been the number one requested song on tribal radio since the 1992. In 2011, he joined the ranks of Jimmy Hendrix, Hank Williams, Crystal Gale, and Richie Valens, and was inducted into the Native Music Hall of Fame.

Born in 1957 in Cook, Minnesota, Secola is affiliated with the Anishinabe tribe. He graduated from Mesabi Community College with a degree in Public Service in 1979, and completed a BA in American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota in 1982. He is married and has two children.

Secola is an accomplished artist, garnering awards and accolades as a musician, a singer, a songwriter, a composer and a producer. He is highly skilled with the guitar, flute, mandolin, banjo, harmonica, and piano, and has played in venues from the halls of the Chicago Urban Indian Centre, to the walls of the bottom of the Grand Canyon. He has also performed at the Olympic Games in Atlanta 1996 and Salt Lake City 2002, and toured Europe several times. Among his numerous appearances he has graced the stages of the Rockslide Festival in Denmark, the Grand Opening Gala of the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, The Kennedy Center and the SXSW in Austin, TX, and is a staple at the Grassroots Festival in Upstate New York, North Carolina and Florida.

A seven-time Native American Music Award winner, Secola has earned NAMMYs not only for his music, but also his abilities as a producer, to include The Best Linguistic Recording for producing ANISHINABEMOIN (2007). A well respected musician, he has worked with music legends such as Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead. Secola has also teamed with academics like author Dr. Tom Venum of the Smithsonian Folklife Institute, collaborating on the CD, AMERICAN WARRIORS: SONGS FOR INDIAN VETERANS, and with elders such as Karen Drift, a speaker of Anishenabemoin.

Secola has produced six well received independent CDs, since the early 1990s.

Corey Medina is a Blues-Rock artist from Shiprock, NM and is Áshįįhí clan of the Diné tribe. He moved to Northern Minnesota in 2012 to be closer to his now wife and mother to their 2 beautiful children. After a couple years of community work and getting to know the music scene, Corey was able to debut his first album in 2015 with a local producers collaboration called Incepticons. Corey now plays, writes and produces full time with his band known as "The Brothers", hence Corey Medina & Brothers. Corey refers to the Brothers as a representation of the relationship he likes to keep with his fellow band mates. The Brothers band consist of Eric Sundeen of Bemidji, MN on Drums and Gary Broste also from Bemidji, on upright bass. After 3 years of talking about a full length studio album, in 2019 Corey and The Brothers released their debut full length album, "Better Days". This year they will be recording their studio sophomore album in Minneapolis at the end of July at Winterland Studios.

They set out to spread light in the dark with their raw, soulful, intimate music and stage presence.

Four cousins - Doug, Mike, Marty, and Reed Two Bulls - came together to form The Wake Singers. The group came to be when Doug, Mike, and Marty were attending The Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with Reed joining later. The cousins are from Red Shirt Table in Oglala Lakota County, South Dakota. 

Mike Two Bulls is a multimedia artist who makes music with The Wake Singers amongst other visual mediums. Mike has shared that his work focuses on concepts including place, history, and identity. As a visual artist Mike aims to capture his lived experiences, and those of his ancestors, too. He prioritizes the vantage point of Native American people, and not that of the tourists who witness them. 

The Curator

Portrait of Alex Buffalohead

Alex Buffalohead

(Bdewakantowan Dakota) is an artist, curator, and musician in the Twin Cities band Bluedog. She is the Arts and Cultural Engagement Manager at the Native American Community Development Institute and All My Relations Arts Gallery in Minneapolis, MN. She is connected to The Cedar as a previous member of the Artist Collective.

The Mni Sota Native Music Series is made by possible by the Rosemary and David Good Family Foundation.