It might not be provocative, but it’s still a bit strange to call a track “No Chants” on which you can hear mainly: Chants. Or not. Joe Rainey emphasizes that the pow-wow chants heard on his debut album NIINETA do not have a religious dimension. The track is program, even beyond that. Because here the pow-wow chants and drums, which the Native American Rainey collected and sang in his own and other tribes in Minnesota, especially the Red Lake Reservation just before the Canadian border, merge exemplarily with the heavy beats and dark streaks of sound contributed by producer Andrew Broder.
The two got to know each other through the 37d03d community around Justin Vernon and the Dessner twins. But if you are expecting chic indie tracks with folkloristic embellishments, you are completely wrong: the vocals are clearly the focus, the additions and adaptations only very carefully open up an additional dimension to the traditional music, which takes it out of the usual environment, but without losing its character fundamentally questionable. Or, to put it another way: NIINETA makes all clichés about feather headdresses superfluous once and for all.
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