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Activating Indigenous Beats

Hip Hop Nativo Festival brings Indigenous Artists and Educators to Campus

By UNC Asheville

August 4^th, 2023

Listen while you read:

Enjoy some of the tracks by indigenous artists mentioned in this story, as well as a few of their other hits.

The Quad at UNC Asheville trembled with the thunder of indigenous beats, words and dancing on a rainy afternoon in April 2023.

Part of “Activating Indigenous Beats: Hip Hop Nativo Festival,” the concert showcased artists from across South, Central and North Abiayala (Americas) who gathered in Asheville, or Tokiyasdi, the Anikituwagi’s (Cherokee) ancestral territory, with support from DJ Seltzer and Asheville local Spaceman Jones.

Culture, language and food were exchanged throughout the festival, including during a tour of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, organized by the Key Center for Community Engaged Learning, which involved the local Cherokee and Latinx communities in the planning and participation of the event.

Two humanities lectures took place during the festival as well as the creation of a cross-cultural, collaborative mural, led by local artists and educators Byron Tenesaca, kichwa-kañari of the Ecuadorian Andes; Jakeli Swimmer, Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indian (EBCI); and Abel Gonzalez Bueno, Hñahñü.

Dozens of UNC Asheville students, staff and faculty members contributed to the mural, including Humanities Coordinator and Lecturer of English Leslee Johnson and students Ari Puentes and Tiffany R. Clayton.

“The ‘Activating Indigenous Beats Mural’ is set up so that the left side represents the South of Abiayala (the Americas) and the right represents the North,” said Juan Sánchez Martínez, associate professor of Spanish who co-organized the event with Cori Anderson ’10, associate director of cultural events and engaged citizenship.

“From the south side of the mural (left), the llama and the jaguar are walking toward the north (right). The buffalo and the panther are walking in opposite directions to eventually meet them. Both journeys are being protected by two feathered-serpents, life-force of creation, called Uktenas in Tsalagi (Cherokee language).”

The first layer of the mural is a weaving pattern inspired by Anikituwagi basketry designs. Tenesaca said these patterns influenced him when he moved to Western North Carolina from the Andean mountains, where his own family are basket weavers.

Finding those connections between peoples are part of what the mural, and the festival as a whole, seek to represent, according to Sánchez Martínez. Art, visual and musical, can be used as a pedagogical tool — a method of teaching and expressing native traditions, beliefs and struggles.

“The mural is a homage to the chakaruna, the bridge-people in the Quechua language, the ones who dedicate their lives to connecting communities and seeding solidarity. This mural was a truly cross-cultural collaboration based on three main pillars: our bodies, our ancestral lands, and our native languages,” Sánchez Martínez said.

Indigenous dancers perform drumming and dancing in Hip Hop Nativo festival.

Modernizing Indigenous Language for New Generations

The rappers and hip hop artists of the festival expressed similar messages during their master class, particularly on music as a means of preserving language and passing on stories to the new generation.

Luanko Minuto Solar, a new Cumbia and rap Mapuche artist, said most artists in Chile do not record songs in the Mapuche language, but he wants to change that.

"For us, our language is a treasure. If our language goes or dies we lose all of that with it," Luanko said. “And music is also a way to preserve our language. But through this music we have been able to connect to the new generations because it has rhythm, because it has flow, because it has style.”

Tall Paul, an Anishinaabee hip hop artist enrolled at the Leech Lake reservation in Minnesota, said he did not learn his language as a child because it was not presented in a modern, interesting way. In mainstream culture, hip hop and sports won his attention.

“My idea for making this song was putting the language to a hip hop track because it is such a universal music genre that is appreciated worldwide,” Paul said.

His song “Prayer in a Song” has a chorus in Anishinaabemowin, the Ojibwe language. He received pushback from elders in his community but, he said, he received a sign he was meant to create it.

“They say ‘hip hop, that’s not traditional, that’s not spiritual, that’s not cultural, you shouldn't be mixing the language with hip hop,’” Paul said. “When I practiced the hook it fit perfectly to the hook structure of the beat naturally and it rhymed naturally. And that was all the sign I needed from the creator to tell me that this was supposed to happen.”

The artists gathered in Lipinsky Hall with music engineering students Griffin Arquette and Garland Schumann to create a new, original track in multiple languages under the guidance of Charles Jude Weinberg, lecturer of music technology and electronics. The final mix will be part of the students’ final project.

Luanko Minuto Solar, a new Cumbia and rap artist, performs in his native Mapuche language.

Music as a Means of Healing and Activism

Creating music that can be appreciated worldwide also allows the artists to speak to pain and struggles within their communities and gain awareness, said Mare Advertencia, a Zapotec rapper from Oaxaca, Mexico. In her song “Se Busca,” meaning “In Search Of,” Advertencia addresses the missing and murdered people of her community.

“This is an open wound for where I'm from. Mexico is experiencing state violence right now; we are seeing more police, more armed forces,” Advertencia said. “To me, music is a way to talk about these uncomfortable topics, things we don't want to talk about because we wish they weren't happening.”

Advertencia said there are over 90,000 known people who are missing, but this number doesn’t reflect the total because even more have gone missing on their journey to immigrate to America. Through music, awareness can be brought to the issue, and healing can be brought to the people who endure it.

“Sometimes talking about art and music can be very beautiful. But there is also this side where we have to really see the hurt and be able to release that hurt through it. This not only talks about what I have been through, but it becomes part of our commonality and talks about what we are going through,” Advertencia said.

Luanko said he uses his music to talk about the importance of water to the Mapuche people and of the displacement and discrimination they face. Tall Paul and Shennelle Feather, public engagement director at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, discussed the painful legacy of forced assimilation and boarding schools in North America and how its effects can still be felt today. Telling stories can be a way of processing trauma, Feather said.

“These are histories that are passed down orally. It places us as an indigenous community where we are as opposed to displacing. We've combatted that displacement all our lives. We are telling our true stories in an accurate way from our own voices,” Feather said.

Mare Advertenica raps on the Quad at UNC Asheville.

Historical Perspective, Modern Methods

The topics highlighted by the festival correspond with the discussions taking place in the Humanities classroom and the American Indian and Indigenous Studies minor of the Interdisciplinary Studies program, which sponsored the event.

“Humanities is not just history. Humanities shows us how history, philosophy, arts, sciences, stories from ancient times to today are woven together to give us our present reality,” Johnson said. “Humanities calls us to pay attention to the voices that persist and resist, rooted in ancient traditions, reaching into the future.”

Students are prompted to bring historical perspective to modern issues. The subjects of indigenous rappers' music are not just issues of antiquity, according to Sánchez Martínez, who references Kyle Mays’ book “Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes.” Hip hop allows them to bring native cultures beyond their image as something of the past and can even act as a vehicle for action.

Feather said events like this show how important it is to go beyond just words, like saying a land acknowledgement for the stolen land of native peoples, to actual action.

“All of these events that are being held at UNC Asheville, all of the faculty that reach out to me on a regular basis, that is a relationship that is being cultivated. There is action followed behind that acknowledgment,” Feather said. “There aren't a lot of universities that are doing that. UNC Asheville is the most active, most supportive university that I've worked with.”

UNC Asheville students dance on the Quad during the Hip Hop Nativo Festival.

Asheville local Spaceman Jones emcees Hip Hop Nativo Festival.

A cross-cultural, collaborative mural created by indigenous artists, UNC Asheville students and faculty.

Activating Indigenous Beats

A rainbow bands overhead as music and culture weave together at Hip Hop Nativo festival.

Indigenous dancers perform drumming and dancing in Hip Hop Nativo festival.

Shennelle Feather, public engagement director at the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, speaks at Hip Hop Nativo festival.

DJ Seltzer provides musical support with indigenous instruments.

Juan Sánchez Martínez (left), associate professor of Spanish, joins students in dance.

Mare Advertencia (middle) enjoys the concert on the Quad.

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