Between 1894 and 1947 in Canada, the residential school system made attendance at Christian-administered boarding schools mandatory for all Indigenous children. Separated from their families and culture and subject to widespread physical and sexual abuse, around 150,000 children were placed in the system over a hundred-year period until the last residential school closed in 1997. In 2015 a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission declared that the system was a form of cultural genocide, but its legacy continues to wound with more than a thousand unmarked graves discovered on the grounds of former residential schools in 2021.
John A. Macdonald, the first prime minister of Canada, was instrumental in establishing the residential school system, with statues bearing his image toppled, shrouded, or otherwise removed over the past couple of summers across Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia. While the fate of some these statues remains uncertain, the Inuk throat singer and avant-garde composer Tanya Tagaq lends her voice to the fray over frenzied growls, faltering breath, industrial synths, and searing percussion, calling out the colonizers as Macdonald melts in the sun and old residential schools blaze against the barren landscape.
From Ramallah at the heart of Palestine the producer and rapper Julmud surveys the sacred and the mundane, resisting the modes of an occupied space through barbed bars of protest. Now based in London, the Japanese artist and Zun Zun Egui co-founder Yama Warashi melds free jazz with evocative folk and dreamy psychedelia, craving nature amid the concrete expanse of the capital. The eminent wedding band Etran de L’Aïr welcome listeners to the desert metropolis of Agadez, Dominowe represents the beguiling electronic basslines of Durban, and Ecko Bazz issues an explosive combination of gqom and grime from the burgeoning rap scene of Uganda.
Fresh from feral lands, Laura Cannell reflects the antiphonal nature of birdsong through a plethora of recorders. Almost sixty years since they formed the Rising Sons, now Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder reunite to reinterpret the songs of two Piedmont blues masters. Ethan Iverson mines his catalogue alongside Larry Grenadier and Jack DeJohnette on his debut for Blue Note, Daniel Wohl transcribes the air we breathe in collaboration with the iSing Silicon Valley choir and the film director Máni Sigfússon, there are new records from Amber Mark, VTSS, YAI, Maya Shenfeld, and Christina Giannone, and winning tracks by HOOK, Carmen Villain, Klein, High Pulp, and Raveena.
Playlists: Spotify · Apple Music · YouTube
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Amber Mark – ‘Bliss’
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HOOK – ‘where’s the racks ?!?!!’
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Julmud جُلْمود – ‘Falnukmel فلنكم’
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Etran de L’Aïr – ‘Tchingolene’
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Daniel Wohl, Viktor Orri Árnason, and iSing Silicon Valley – ‘Drift’
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Yama Warashi – ‘Makkuroi Mizu’
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Ethan Iverson – ‘She Won’t Forget Me’
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Carmen Villain – ‘Subtle Bodies’
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Maya Shenfeld – ‘Mountain Larkspur’
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High Pulp – ‘All Roads Lead To Los Angeles’ (feat. Jaleel Shaw)
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Raveena – ‘Secret’ (feat. Vince Staples)
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Laura Cannell – ‘For the Gatherers’
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Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder – ‘Hooray Hooray’
