{"id":50930,"date":"2020-10-14T16:29:55","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T22:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/young-navajo-musicians-shape-define-country-music-genre\/"},"modified":"2020-10-14T22:29:55","modified_gmt":"2020-10-14T22:29:55","slug":"young-navajo-musicians-shape-define-country-music-genre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/young-navajo-musicians-shape-define-country-music-genre\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Navajo musicians shape, define country music genre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"George
George Yazzie has adopted a sound focused on strumming guitars, galloping drums and engaging songwriting that some may call country music, but he calls \u201ccountry-esque\u201d music.<\/span>Courtesy of Becki Jones<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Ryan Allison and George Yazzie say it is hard to describe the sound of Navajo country music, but it is unmistakable once you hear it.<\/p>\n

The twang of a bruised, old electric guitar evoking miles and miles of open space, the thump of lo-fidelity drums recorded by any means necessary, and lyrics about certain places, certain feelings, certain words, and a shared history of resilience, resistance and survival. These are some components of the Navajo country music sound.<\/p>\n

Allison and Yazzie, who release music under the moniker Dirt Rhodes, are part of a generation of young Navajo country musicians trying to both define what it means to be a Navajo country musician and redefine the Navajo country music sound to speak to their own generation.<\/p>\n

Both Yazzie and Allison grew up in For Defiance, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation, where they played in punk bands as teenagers to get away from the Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard covers played by country music bands that dominated the music scene in Fort Defiance.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up on the Navajo Reservation, country music is a staple. You\u2019re around it everywhere,\u201d Allison said. \u201cEvery weekend, there\u2019s a Navajo country band playing in every community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ryan
Ryan Allison says he took an interest in Navajo country music after moving to Flagstaff, Arizona, and then Phoenix to start school at Arizona State University.<\/span>Courtesy of Ryan Allison<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Allison said he was aware of Navajo country bands that wrote and recorded their own songs, such as Stateline and Ace\u2019s Wild, which he called \u201crough, but soulful.\u201d But he didn\u2019t have any interest in the music until he moved first to Flagstaff, Arizona, and then Phoenix to start school at Arizona State University. First came pangs of homesickness that left him wanting to hear country music and the sounds of home, and then came the death of his grandfather.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of wrote that song in a night,\u201d Allison said about \u201cOld Sounds,\u201d a track on his debut project, \u201cNavajo Country Music,\u201d which he self-released in September on Bandcamp, an independent music-buying and streaming platform. \u201cWhat that song is talking about is missing my grandfather and the songs that he sang.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inspired by his grandfather, the song was the first country song Allison ever wrote, and the inspiration behind his \u201cDirt Rhodes\u201d project, which he describes as sticking to traditional Navajo country music traditions, but switching it up a bit, \u201clike \u2018Ace\u2019s Wild\u2019 on drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"George
George Yazzie has adopted a sound focused on strumming guitars, galloping drums and engaging songwriting that some may call country music, but he calls &#x201c;country-esque&#x201d; music.<\/span>Courtesy of Shayden Joe<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

For Yazzie, his conversion to country music came through discovering Indigenous rock and country bands from the past like the Zuni Midnighters, The Nomads and Sidney Poolheco \u2013 groups and artists who combined lo-fi garage rock, country and surf music with lyrics that reflected their Indigenous heritage, pride and the growing movement for Indigenous rights, land, sovereignty and social justice in the 1960s and \u201970s.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of that stuff is like impossible to find these days. I was lucky enough to hear them through family members, YouTube and KTNN (the local AM radio station that broadcasts Native American, country and bluegrass music in both Navajo and English in Window Rock, Arizona),\u201d Yazzie said, \u201cA lot of that stuff is just lost in time though, unfortunately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inspired by those bands, in 2012, Yazzie started a \u201ccountry-shoegaze\u201d band called Midnight Stew. Allison recorded a cover of one of Midnight Stew\u2019s song, \u201cTill the Sunlight Comes Up,\u201d which celebrates the Navajo Nation and the joys of partying and listening to music.<\/p>\n

As a solo artist, Yazzie peeled back the noise and raucousness of shoegaze music and adopted a sound focused on strumming guitars, galloping drums and engaging songwriting that some may call country music, but he calls \u201ccountry-esque\u201d music.<\/p>\n

On a demo recording and a live recording released this year on his own Albuquerque-based Chapter House records, Yazzie creates an atmosphere of late-night drives through rocky roads and raucous dances at country music bars. It shares a certain connection to the Indigenous country rock of Stateline and the Zuni Midnighters, but Yazzie\u2019s music takes what they were doing a step further and puts even more emphasis on songwriting and lyrics, something he thinks is one of the main distinguishing factors of Navajo country music.<\/p>\n

Yazzie\u2019s songs often touch on the current political climate and rail against things like the rising racist, white nationalist and fascist movements. He also addresses anti-Indigenous laws and politicians. On songs like \u201cThe Dine Shuffle\u201d on Yazzie\u2019s KTNN demo, Yazzie sings, \u201cWhen you see the Western world collapse\/and realize there is no going back\/will you raise your voice when the cavalry come\/burn it all down and run, run, run?\/Are you ready for the rez beat when the time has come?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of it is from my experience and that includes being an Indigenous person,\u201d Yazzie said about his songwriting, \u201cI like talking about that because a lot of that isn\u2019t being talked about. On \u2018Westward No!,\u2019 I\u2019m singing about being a brown person in the USA these days. I\u2019m singing about being a brown person in a racist country that doesn\u2019t want to admit that they are. It\u2019s about being an Indigenous person and still people having ignorance that we\u2019re still here and how the world is full of people of color.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yazzie said he writes for his Indigenous fans.<\/p>\n

Allison calls Yazzie, and his Chapter House record label, an inspiration for his own music and \u201cthe glue of the artsy, indie music scene on the rez.\u201d He speaks with Yazzie regularly about growing and evolving the Navajo country music sound, and his own songwriting.<\/p>\n

The last song on Allison\u2019s \u201cNavajo Country Music\u201d album is a prime example of the emphasis Allison and Navajo country musicians put on the songwriting craft. On \u201cKit Carson Drive,\u201d over a slow, strolling acoustic guitar strum and gentle thumping bass, Allison sings a seemingly straight-forward song about one of the main roads through Fort Defiance, but if you listen, it\u2019s much deeper than that.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just about my hometown,\u201d Allison said, \u201cBut it\u2019s also a loose reference to The Long Walk, because Kit Carson initiated The Long Walk. It\u2019s very much a commentary about the resilience of the Navajo people. We\u2019re still here, even after a road that goes through the center of our town being named after Kit Carson, and having to be reminded about that history and trauma all the time. It\u2019s kind of funny, or not funny, that this song came out during (the) COVID-19 (pandemic), which hit the Navajo Nation so hard. It\u2019s kind of about that, too. We\u2019re still here. We\u2019re still alive. We\u2019re still a people. We\u2019re still a nation. We\u2019re still making music.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

evoke miles of open space, others convey political messages<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[938,28,1655,443],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-50930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-country-music","tag-headlines","tag-navajo-nation","tag-san-juan-county-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50930"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=50930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}