Matt Cazares
Guitarist in Piñata Protest. Photographed in San Antonio, Texas
A great number of punk, rock and heavy metal bands got their start in Arizona. The Navajo punk rock band Blackfire is one of them. The band was founded in 1989 by Jeneda, Klee, and Clayson Benally, three siblings born in the heart of the land struggle at Black Mesa in the Navajo Nation. They merge traditional Native American music with punk-rock, and are strong advocates against social injustice and the oppression of indigenous people.
Klee and his father Jones Benally photographed outside Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona. Jones raised his children on tribal chants and dances. They still occasionally perform as the Jones Benally Family, either as part of or separately from Backfire performances, to display their traditional form of dance, song and story that has been carried on for generations.
Jones Benally
This is Dr Jones. He is a Navajo medicine man and chanter. His daughter and two sons are musicians in the punk-rock protest band Blackfire. I met them in the Navajo reservation in Arizona whilst doing an explorative journey into the rich tapestry of American music together with filmmaker Iggi Ögard. We drove 8000 miles that winter. From highways to pathways, from big cities to quirky, small towns off the beaten track. We met local musicians with a story to tell, be it bluegrass pickers in Tennessee or punk rock polka rebels in Texas, amateurs or professionals. Each voice reflects Americas unique cultural and ethnical diversity, and their music follows the landscape, from the endless arid desert in Arizona to the muddy swamplands in Louisiana.
Alex McMurray
Singer/songwriter
The guitar slinger has been a fixture on the music scene in downtown New Orleans since the `80s. Over the years he has solidified his status as a kind of New Orleans institution with his whiskey-throated voice and curious ability to find inspiration in the degenerate. He even appeared three times as himself in the HBO series Treme.
Photographed in his backyard in New Orleans
Nathan Lee
Singer-songwriter
Photographed at home in his studio in Nashville, Tennessee
Marcus Cazares and JJ Martinez
Bassplayer and drummer in Piñata Protest
Photographed in San Antonio, Texas
Brother Dege
(aka Dege Legg)
Born and raised to Cajun French, self-proclaimed post modern delta blues musician Brother Dege was one of the South’s best kept secrets until Quentin Tarantino personally selected one of his songs for his Django Unchained soundtrack.
Photographed in Lafayette, Louisiana
Annie McCue
Singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, video director and radio host on «Songs on the Wire» show which features an eclectic program of music and live interviews and is broadcast on East Nashville Radio.
Photographed in East Nashville, Tennessee
James «Super Chikan» Johnson
Plantations and cotton pickers – segregation and discrimination – hard times and the Delta blues…Mississippi has a troubled past, and it still ranks last of all states when it comes to health, education and poverty levels. The infamous Jim Crow laws were prominent here up until the 1960s. But where as strict segregation applied in all public places, local musicians created an integrated community mixing traditional African beats with that of white Southerners Scot-Irish music legacy. The Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music, and its hallmark is steel guitars, harmonica and a lamenting vocal rising out of the regions hard times.
We drove Highway 61, the Mississippi Blues Trail all the way up to Clarksdale. Legend has it that the famous blues singer Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil to achieve success right here at the crossroad at the edge of the small town. Nicknamed “The Golden Buckle on the Cotton Belt”, Clarksdale has played a significant role in the history of the Delta blues. We hooked up with local Blues Music award winning artist and guitar maker, James “Super Chikan” Johnson. Known for an edgier, electrified version of the raw, uncut Delta blues, we were invited to his innermost sanctuary – his “didley-bow” workshop