A Tribe Called Red

Bursting forth from Canada’s capital, native Producer/DJ crew A Tribe Called Red is making an impact on the global electronic scene with a truly unique sound. Made up of three members – two-time Canadian DMC Champion DJ Shub, DJ NDN and Bear Witness – the group has created a signature style called powwowstep, a mix of traditional pow wow vocals and drumming with cutting-edge electronic music. DJ Bear Witness doubles as the crew’s visual artist and creates stunning, political and sometimes humorous videos that incorporate film and pop culture references to native people and reclaim the aboriginal image. They’re known for creating and running the Electric Pow Wow events in Ottawa, which showcased native talent and aboriginal culture, alongside an open and wild party, and are, in a sense, the most recent evolution of the pow wow event.

Since starting out in late 2010, A Tribe Called Red has gained popularity not only within urban club scenes, but also with the youth on many native reservations. Within a couple years, they became the face of Urban Native youth renaissance, proudly championing their heritage while being on top of popular music, fashion and art.

LightningCloud

LightningCloud is a North American Hip Hop group based out of Los Angeles, California. The duo consists of Crystle Lightning, MC RedCloud (with DJ Wise and Dj Hydroe on the turntables).

Invigorated by the sounds and energy of the underground club scenes, LightningCloud found a way to fuse the elements of Hip Hop with Electro-House music, giving birth to a two headed, fire spitting dragon of sophisticated delivery. With a vibrant, multimedia stage performance in their arsenal and a hunger that is all but gone in this generation, LightningCloud arrives to save us all from the monotony...just in the nick of time.

Moe Clark

Métis spoken word artist Moe Clark fuses her unique understanding of performance narrative with traditions of circle singing and spoken word. Mistress of the looping pedal, Moe creates poetic songs that resonate with the power to heal and connect with authentic purpose. Aside from performance work, she is a community arts educator, facilitating voice, writing and spoken word performance workshops in high schools and local communities to promote literacy and creative expression. She believes that through the continuum of the oral tradition and active involvement in communities, both locally and internationally, we have the power to transform.

Murray Porter

Murray Porter is a 2012 JUNO Award winner for `Aboriginal Album of the Year’ for his CD, `Songs Lived & Life Played’. Murray is Mohawk from Six Nations, Ontario, now living on Coast Salish Territory in North Vancouver. Murray is a self-taught blues singer, songwriter, musician, for over 30 years playing his blues world-wide. He’s shared the stage with Artists including B.B. King, the late Etta James, The Neville Brothers, Mavis Staples, Derek Miller, and The Funk Brothers (twice). He sang on the ‘Aboriginal Welcoming Song’ at the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, and had 22 performances during the Olympics. Murray wrote and sings the theme song for ‘Rez Bluez’ on APTN, and appeared on both seasons.

Samantha Crain

Anais Nin said, “Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.” That suggestion was the muse impelling the conception of Samantha Crain’s second LP, You (Understood). Each song on this album rests on a juncture with a person, a real person, and it recounts a particular episode of life with that person. The scenes and the people are not especially unusual or stirring but the idea that the precise installment will never, in all of time, happen again was enough to interest Crain. She is taking a microscope to the simplest of human interactions and feelings, turning them over in her hands, looking at them from all angles, measuring them on all sides, and taking them apart, realizing they really are exceptional but only in the smallest ways.

For a project that engages in so much dissection, Crain solicited Joey Lemon, producer of her Confiscation EP and guru of the Midwestern avant-garde band, Berry, to help her glue it all back together. They, along with Eric Nauni (Student Film) and Ben Wigler (Arizona, New Beard), recorded the eleven songs in 7 days at Joey’s studio in a white pole barn on the north side of Wichita, KS. Feeling the importance of giving each of these songs a sound as customized as the experiences and the people themselves, Crain reached out for different tools than on the country-tinged Songs In the Night LP. The guitars got fuzzier, the time signatures got modified, the drums got audacious, the spaces got bigger, the highs were higher, and the lows were lower. She got caught up in it, caught up in the decibels and the dynamics and the people. This is her attempt to preserve her contact with some human beings, 16 to be exact. There are 16 people that affected her through the writing and recording of these songs and You (Understood) is her monument to those sporadic and revered chapters.

Tanya Tagaq

What do free improvisation, Inuit throat singing, and hair-raising passion have in common? Add descriptors like mesmerizing, intimate and ‘pushing the edge’ and you begin to understand the endlessly inventive quality of Tanya Tagaq’s sonic equation.

Born and raised in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut in Canada’s high arctic, Tanya grew up surrounded by Inuit and western culture. It wasn’t until her teenage years that she began experimenting with Inuit throat singing, developing her signature solo style. Her first professional gig at a festival in Inuvik won the admiration of friends of Bjork, eventually leading to an appearance on the Icelandic artist’s 2004 CD, Medulla and a chance to accompany her on tour.

Tanya has released two critically-acclaimed albums, Sinaa and Auk/Blood, both of which were nominated for Juno Awards and won awards at the 2005 and 2008 Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards. In 2005, the world-renowned Kronos Quartet invited her to participate in a monumental collaborative project Nunavut, which was performed across North America and Europe. The ensemble reunited in 2007 for the creation of Tundra Songs by Derek Charke.

Recently venturing into film, Tanya contributed to the “Diaries of Knut Rasmussen” soundtrack and acted as musician/narrator for the award-winning National Film Board documentary, This Land. She joined forces with musician Jesse Zubot and filmmakers Felix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphael for the video Tungijuq, which premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival and 2010 Sundance Film Festival and also won “Best Short Drama” at the 2009 imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival Awards.

Tanya is presently at work on another album, slated for release in 2012

Zuzuka Poderosa

ZUZUKA PODEROSA is the queen warrior of her own special brand of Baile Funk: CARIOCA BASS

Funk Carioca (another name for Baile Funk, which means “The Funk Ball”) originated in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, borrowing heavily from the Miami Booty Bass movement of the 80s; it’s just the starting place of the ZUZUKA POWER-sound.

Born in Vitoria, Brazil, ZUZUKA grew up in Rio and spent her formative years in the West Indies. She later moved to Brooklyn, New York to study jazz vocal improvisation and work at her poetry. For the past few years, she's been building up the underground Baile Funk, Moombahton and Global Bass scene in New York as a DJ, host and bartender.

ZUZUKA collaborates and releases singles with producers from all over the world who mix the past with the future in Sur America-cosmic new ways. She raps and sings in Portuguese, Spanish and English (and she likes to say “Body Language”), musing provocatively and sarcastically over boomy electric kick drums and Latin percussion.

ZUZUKA makes Carioca Bass music. 'Interracial Music Babies' all her own. Her sound is fierce and fun. With a wildly engaging show, she conjures images of hot summer dance parties on gritty Brooklyn rooftops or up in the hills overlooking the sea.

She’s been profiled in PRI's The World, MTV Iggy, and NPR Alt.Latino.

Zuzuka’s project with Sonora of Texas party collective, Peligrosa - 'Sonora Remixes: Zuzuka Poderosa' - was critically acclaimed around the Global Bass communities in 2010.

Her collaboration with Dublin-based producer, Orquesta, the ‘Dona Sandra EP’ is a collection of remixes, named by NPR as one of the ‘Best Beats of Summer 2011’.

In late 2011, ZUZUKA was invited to give a lecture at NYU about Carioca Bass for a class on Contemporary Brazilian Music, the only of its type on the East Coast, led by Professor Jason Stanyek. She was also featured in Béco Dranoff’s documentary, 'BEYOND IPANEMA: Brazilian Waves In Global Music', about the global influence of Brazilian music.

The ‘Carioca Bass Mixtape’ by Kush Arora was dropped on Okayplayer, Okay Africa and Large Up in Spring 2012. MTV Iggy described the mix: “It’s hard to match the heat of her live show, but this mix comes close, in particular because of all the far flung beats (and buddies) it brings together. Folks from South Africa’s Spoek Mathambo to true baile funk heavies like DJ Edgar are on here, helping to realize that “interracial music babies” vision of hers with a little funk, a little dancehall, even a little bhangra. It’s a party. So, get down.”

“Ambassador of Bhangra”, DJ Rekha,debuted her most recent single, ‘Pyar Baile’ featuring Dave Sharma and Meetu Chilana, on her Beat Bazaar label.