How many bands create innovative new sounds, connect Canadians and impact local and international audiences? Not many. Flying Down Thunder and Rise Ashen may be a rare exception.
Nominated for this year’s Juno for aboriginal album of the year, Flying Down Thunder and Rise Ashen’s vibrant and creative album One Nation represents the best of Canada: diverse voices, aboriginal wisdom, international influences and a powerful collaboration of talents.
The men behind it – Flying Down Thunder (Kevin Chief), a member of the Algonquin nation and a federal negotiator by day, and Rise Ashen (Eric Vani), a “half-French, half-Italian mutt” in his words and both an Ottawa realtor and in-demand DJ – see their album as a metaphor for cultural unity.
Chief layers Algonquin powwow-style drumming, chanting and traditional storytelling lyrics sung in Anishinaabe on top of Vani’s mix of urban electronic beats – house, hip-hop, nu-jazz and world music. The blend: music that makes everyone want to dance, whether an elder in northern Quebec or a teen in an underground Bosnian nightclub. While its diverse audience is growing, One Nation is doing more to empower our nation than most Canadians may realize.
Here are the top five reasons why all Canadians should dance proudly to Flying Down Thunder and Rise Ashen:
1. They’re making Aboriginal music “cool” again.
“It makes young people proud,” Chief says of First Nations teens who hear their music. “[They] can say ‘wow, that’s my culture! That’s my people’s music right there!’”
Instead of aboriginal youths shifting their attention to mainstream pop music at the expense of their families’ culture and indigenous language, Chief is excited to see teens grooving to a new twist on traditional Anishinaabe teachings.
And their music’s “cool enough,” Chief says, “that you could play it on Much Music or you could play it on the radio and it has that same addictive feel like when you listen to artists like Sean Paul.” So true.
2. International partiers are loving it.
At least 23 countries quickly picked up on the duo’s unique sound. Flying Down Thunder and Rise Ashen are getting airplay around the globe, from Bosnia to South Africa to Australia.
The international reach is awesome, Vani says, because aboriginal music is “usually only heard in very, very select circles in traditional gatherings.”
While the DJ has an international following, he’s thrilled to see his colleague’s aboriginal sounds take on “a new life.”
3. They’re empowering youth.
Chief and Vani use their music as an educational tool. Vani and his wife teach and perform house dancing, while Chief’s daughters, 12 and 17, sing and dance with their dad. Together the two families, and a crew of urban dancers, lead workshops in small towns and First Nations communities across the country.
The two artists brought their “dance party,” as they call it, to a school in the Timiskaming First Nation, one of Chief’s home communities near a northern Ontario-Quebec border, in March. In June, they’re bringing the workshop to Iqaluit.
The kids who attend “want to learn cool moves…and more importantly we want to teach them the proper values. The main value being respect. Respect for each other and respect for the music itself, and that you don’t have to do what you see on TV,” says Chief.
The duo wants kids to be proud of who they are. “Not to be shy on the dance floor,” Chief says, but “just to be there to represent who you are as a person.”
4. They promote racial unity.
The artists dedicated One Nation to William Commanda, an Algonquin elder and spiritual leader who died last August at 97. Commanda had travelled extensively, leaving his community near Maniwaki, Que., to share his wisdom and participate in ceremonies with other influential leaders, such as the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela.
Although Commanda and Chief had a personal relationship, the elder’s message of racial unity resonated for Vani, too. Commanda was an advocate for cultural respect and would host annual powwow gathering called “The Circle of All Nations.”
“He would invite all of these musicians and artists from around the world,” Vani says, “Africans, Asians, it was really like a very multicultural mix of music.
“He said that we were all rainbow people.”
Chief and Vani agree. “It doesn’t matter what race you are,” Chief says, “respect one another, love one another.”
Vani uses some of Commanda’s words as rap lyrics in the album’s title track “Pejig Dodem” (“One Nation”), in much the same way, they point out, as Bob Marley used former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie’s 1963 UN speech for the song “War.”
5. They’ll make you wanna move, too.
Oh yeah, and there’s that. It’s absolutely impossible to listen to Flying Down Thunder and Rise Ashen without bouncing even a little. One Nation could easily get all of us moving together – crossing cultural divides and dance floors.