In the face of artists like Dead Feather, genres prove to be next to useless. Yes, you can pull the music apart and find familiar sounds and threads running through his music, but there are so many coiled around each other, so many creatively ebbing and flowing, so many opposites attracting and creatively colliding, that you might as well accept that he makes music that is essentially a genre unto itself. Isn’t that what all artists should be aiming to do?
Dead Feather is a deaf artist who uses myriad art forms, extending far beyond the musical expression found here, to explore themes of culture and civilization, assimilation and oppression, particularly relating to the experiences of the Mvskoke-Creek tribe.
“Red Poem,” taken from the album Cate Heleswv (Red Medicine) Vol. 1 is utterly unique, blends of jazz-fuelled grooves and soulful vibes carrying the poignant and powerful spoken word lyrics gradually into more forceful rock and roll territory, often feeling like Gil Scott Heron collaborating with Jimi Hendrix as it ebbs and flows between performance poetry and concious soul outpourings and experimental psychedelic rock urges.
And as powerful as this music seems coming out of the speaker, it is clear that this is more than merely a song; it is a literary piece, a vital sonic TED talk, a reckoning, a history lesson and the soundtrack to a multi-disciplinary form of expression as academic as it is artistic, as culturally questioning as it is creatively wrought, as powerful as it is poignant.
Some music might be entertaining, some might be informative, but “Red Poem” is something else. “Red Poem” and indeed the artist behind it are important.
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