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Song of the Day
"Call of the moose" Willy Mitchell, 1980 As you might know, September 30th is Truth and Reconciliation day (more commonly known as Orange Shirt Day), a national day in Canada dedicated to spreading awareness about the legacy of Residential schools on Indigenous people. Instead of just focusing on a song, I also wanted to briefly talk about the history of the sixties scoop and its influence on Indigenous American music and activism.
The process of Residential schooling in Canada existed well before the '60s, but the new processes of the sixties scoop began in 1951. It was a process where the provincial government had the power to take Indigenous children from their homes and communities and put them into the child welfare system. Despite the closing of residential schools, more and more children were being taken away from their families and adopted into middle-class white ones.
Even though Indigenous communities only made up a tiny portion of the total population, 40-70% of the children in these programs would be Aboriginal. In total, 20,000 children would be victims of these policies through the 60s and 70s.
These adoptions would have disastrous effects on their victims. Not only were sexual and physical abuse common problems but the victims were forcibly stripped of their culture and taught to hate themselves. The community panel report on the sixties scoop writes:
"The homes in which our children are placed ranged from those of caring, well-intentioned individuals, to places of slave labour and physical, emotional and sexual abuse. The violent effects of the most negative of these homes are tragic for its victims. Even the best of these homes are not healthy places for our children. Anglo-Canadian foster parents are not culturally equipped to create an environment in which a positive Aboriginal self-image can develop. In many cases, our children are taught to demean those things about themselves that are Aboriginal. Meanwhile, they are expected to emulate normal child development by imitating the role model behavior of their Anglo-Canadian foster or adoptive parents."
and to this day indigenous children in Canada are still disproportionately represented in foster care. Despite being 5% of the Total Canadian population, Indigenous children make up 53.8% of all children in foster care.
I would like to say that the one good thing that came out of this gruesome and horrible practice of state-sponsored child relocation was that there was a birth of culture from protest music, but there wasn't. In fact, Indigenous music has a long history of being erased and whitewashed from folk history.
From Buffy Saint-Marie pretending to be Indigenous to the systematic denial of first nations people from the Canadian mainstream music scene, the talented artists of the time were forcibly erased.
Which is why this album featuring Willy Mitchell is so important.
Willy Mitchell and The Desert River Band
This Album was compiled of incredibly rare, unheard folk and rock music of North American indigenous music in the 60s-80s. It is truly, a of a kind historical artifact and a testimony to the importance of archival work to combat cultural genocide. Please give the entire thing a listen if you have time. Call of the Moose is my favorite song on the album, written and performed by Willy Mitchell in the 80s. His Most interesting song might be 'Big Policeman' though, written about his experience of getting shot in the head by the police. He talks about it here:
"He comes there and as soon as I took off running, he had my two friends right there — he could have taken them. They stopped right there on the sidewalk. They watched him shootin’ at me. He missed me twice, and when I got to the tree line, he was on the edge of the road, at the snow bank. That’s where he fell, and the gun went off. But that was it — he took the gun out. He should never have taken that gun out. I spoke to many policemen. And judges, too. I spoke with lawyers about that. They all agreed. He wasn’t supposed to touch that gun. So why did I only get five hundred dollars for that? "
These problems talked about here, forced displacement, cultural assimilation, police violence, child exploitation, and erasure of these crimes, still exist in Canada. And so long as they still exist, it is imperative to keep talking about them. Never let the settler colonial government have peace; never let anyone be comfortable not remembering the depth of exploitation.
Every Child Matters
autumn town leaves | iron & wine
There's this song called Counting Sheep by The Crane Wives and the first lines are thus: You sigh into your cup of coffee as you watch the morning news There goes your good day There's the knot on the noose
I know that knot on the noose is an idiom, but I can't help but hearing it like this:
>Be me >Morning >Drinking coffee >sotired.jpg >Turn on the news >See some shit >"Welp, might as well just kill myself now."
With this as the header image:
Why do I appreciate Bob Dylan so much? Well, here are some random thoughts:
My brain literally melts in pleasure when I listen to song by Smerichka, a Ukrainian kind of rebellious (as their music was a complete opposite of what soviet union wanted people to listen to) ensemble from early 70s and realise there's the sound of the guitar which was popularized (if not invented) by Bob Dylan in 1965-66 on his Bring It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde albums.
Like Dude.
Dylan, an American performer and songwriter, created a mixture of American folk and Rock-'n'-roll music which was so iconic that it somehow even got to the Soviet Union despite Bob Dylan's music being prohibited there. Ukrainian Mustache Funk (yes, it's an actual name of this genre) was heavily influenced by the folk motives specific to the Western Ukraine and it's particularly amazing that you can hear the influence of American folk-rock in their music too. It's like a perfect fusion of everything I have always loved and it's only possible because this son of a gun ones invented it and held on to it despite the criticism.
Btw, I was reading BD's biography by Howard Sounes and tried to immerse into the story through re-listening to his albums appropriate to the periods of his life I was reading about, and at some point when I was listening to his debut album I heard his iconic performance of the House of The Rising Sun I started crying like a baby. Why? Well, I realised that, according to the book, even though this particular arrangement of the song was created by Dave Van Ronk, it was Bob Dylan who first recorded it in this sound. This song in this particular arrangement performed by Bob Dylan was so popular, that the Animals made their famous recording of the song being inspired by that specific recording by BD. The song became so famous that somehow it got to the USSR where someone once performed it, some guy from my hometown heard it and learned how to play it, my father heard that someone singing this song (having 0 idea what the original song was like,who first recorded it, who arranged it and so on), learned how to play it himself and many years after taught me how to play it on the piano. So, to cut a long story short, this is one of the first songs I have ever heard in my life and the first song I learned to play, and it is so damn nostalgic to me, and I love it so much, and I have so many warm family memories connected to this song and all this because this little smelly Jewish boy once decided to record it for his debut album in 1962 in Greenwich village so far away from my home. The song is so amazing and timeless that my father who was born 5 years after this song was released on Bob Dylan and legitimately fell in love with it and decided to pass this love to his children. Just how fucking amazing is that ffs
Peter Wyatt and Jenni Ox Live in NYC.
Ain’t no gift like the present tense // Ain’t no love like an old romance
One of my favorite NEEDTOBREATHE songs! I love the especially folky vibe of this song, and I love the lyrics! Bear’s voice always sounds great, but complemented with this music, his voice really shines through.
BOB DYLAN AGHHHH i love Bob Dylan
Stevie Nicks.
Bob Dylan, London Window 1966 Poster
Saw my idol Bob Dylan a few wks ago! (Awful quality I know 😢😢😢😢)
Joni Mitchell for the Weekend Magazine, Jan 11, 1969.
Nick Drake, shot possibly in Ireland.
Newsclippings about Jeff Buckley.
Some of my edited little dwawings…
Jimbert evidence 📑🕵️♂️
Led Zeppelin, 1970.