Search - Robbie Robertson :: Contact From the Underworld of Redboy

Good Medicine for Yuppies & other Wasichu

Elderbear | Loma Linda, Aztlan | 03/15/2001

(5 out of 5 stars)

"So, you've already worn out your Graceland & Rhythm of the Saints recordings? Good news, Wasichu! Robbie Robertson gives you a taste of ethnicity folded into corporate musical paradigms. Hop into your Suburban with alloy wheels and shove this disk into your player while you cruise the 'burbs. Listen to it and feel spiritual--maybe you've even read all the Lynn V. Andrews books and are nearly a shaman yourself. Anyway, don't get too comfortable, this music can mess you up for life.I was once a happy yuppie, just like you. I lived in the America of the free and the brave. I already had Robertson's Music for the Native Americans and considered it one of my faves. After I heard an NPR interview with Robbie about his latest project, I rushed out to get my own copy of this CD. Hey! This music isn't quite as "spiritual" as the other stuff. This music has an undertone of anger. Still, I was as angry as the next guy, and I know that "once upon a time" injustices were perpetrated against these noble primitives. Of course they're angy--but isn't it nice how they preserved their traditions so that we forked-tongue palefaces can appropriate them for ourselves?"Making a noise in this world ... I don't want your promise ... I don't want your whiskey ... I only want what belongs to me" What's that all about? Don't we have treaties? Federal grants to people on the reservations?Sacrifice. Track 5. Cool, esoteric opening. Who's this guy saying "We have a million stories to tell, I'm just one of the million or more stories that could be told"? Leonard Peltier? Who's that? "Sacrifice your freedom, sacrifice your prayer, take away your language, cut off all your hair, sacrifice the loved ones who always stood by me, stranded in the wasteland, set my spirit free.""I'm living in the United States Penitentary, which is the swiftest growing Indian reservation in the country."Whoa! That's not right!"Shootout ... two agents killed ... one indian murdered ... I was found guilty before a jury of non-Indian people ... The prosecutor stated that they did not know who killed their agents nor did he know what participation Leonard Peltier *may* have played in it, but someone has to pay for the crime ... a lot of nights I lay in my cell and I can't understand this hell, this hell and this terror ..."Leonard's word is too compelling to ignore. Cruise the internet. Read his story. Find out about broken treaties, about activists harrassed, jailed, murdered. Maybe this is the "Land of the Free," but it helps to have white skin. I can't go back. Innocence was so easy. "I've gone too far to back down ... not until my people are free will I give up ... if I have to sacrifice some more, then I'll sacrifice some more."Don't buy this CD unless you're willing to examine your role in the oppression of indigenous people. I noticed that this album is most popular in Denmark! Hey, that figures. The Danes didn't massacre, starve, poison, and infect 10,000,000 people, then beat the survivors for practicing their traditional religion. My ancestors came to this country after the last of the Native Americans was safely herded onto a reservation, treated worse than cattle in many instances. Not my fault, eh? Whose land do I live on? Whose government continues to oppress, persecute, and cheat the survivors? I'm a white American, a wasichu. When I do not act, I become an accomplice to genocide, to persecution and oppression.There. I've warned you. Click somewhere safer. Get yourself a nice Carlos Nakai flute CD. Go buy another Lynn V. Andrews book. But whatever you do, DON'T buy Leonard Peltier's book, Prison Writings. Then you'll *really* never be the same."

Solid.

Paul Bridges | California | 12/23/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"With some native american heritage myself, I've sampled a few artists (Nakai, etc). But I put this album and Robertson's "Music for Native Americans" together at the top of my "native american" list. It's traditionally influenced without being trite, modern without being too edgy. Thumbs up."

Emotional Absinthe

Fred McGhee | Austin, TX | 06/14/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Better than therapy, lovelier than a summer rain, smoother than smoke, heart pounding like Bison, sentimental like a first kiss, tougher than leather, rapturous like love. Robbie Robertson delivers once again. This album does the very difficult: it communicates an authentic sense of culture and history without beating you upside the head, while also being totally OPEN and embracing to outside influence. This music communicates its history to you in simultaneously subtle and overt ways (just like most Indigenous people do in person), and speaks to your head and heart at the same time. And for good measure, it also gets you off your ass and gets you dancing. Now what could be better than that?For God's sake Robbie, you've made us wait long enough! Give us another album already!"