Medicine Singers: Powwow meets Spiritual Jazz and Punk

Photo: Erik Luyten

From psychedelic punk to spiritual jazz and electronic music, the music remains firmly rooted in the intense physical power of the powwow drum and the Medicine Singers’ connection to their ancestral music, creating a daring and ambitious record that celebrates tradition, while boldly breaking away from its restrictions.

Medicine Singers formed as a collaborative offshoot of the Eastern Medicine Singers, an Eastern Algonquin powwow group that performs traditional and contemporary American Indian music. The project was born from a spontaneous collaboration between guitarist Yonatan Gat and the Eastern Medicine Singers at SXSW 2017. Gat’s swirling psychedelic guitar lines wrapped naturally around the group’s pulsating chants and rhythms.

Bridging multiple dimensions of sound and featuring a remarkable cast of guest artists, including production mastermind Ryan Olson, ambient music pioneer Laraaji, “no wave” icon Ikue Mori, and jaimie branch, a rising star in the world of improvised music.   

Photo: Rebecca Blisset

“I think it's a completely new realm of music,” says Daryl Black Eagle Jamieson, the founder and director of the Eastern Medicine Singers, and a Clan Chief of the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation. Jamieson finds power in the album’s balance of the traditional and the radical. “The power of the guitar with the tribal drums sends this vibe through me that makes me feel alive.”  

Powwow music is the foundation of Medicine Singers’ sound. Jamieson’s passion for preserving the culture and language of the Pocasset Wampanoag has been the driving force behind all his work in music. The Eastern Medicine Singers perform primarily in the Massachusett dialect of Algonquin, a language Jamieson studied with the late Clinton Wixon, a venerated tribal leader who was known as one of the last fluent speakers of the Wampanoag language.