Native American hip-hop: Supaman
To be honest, it never occurred to me to check out Native American pop music until I overheard some people talk about Native American hip-hop in – of all places – an izakaya joint.
For decades I have been obsessed with Native Americans and I have at one time searched for Native American music but that would mostly be the kind of new age music a certain brand of white folks seem to like who fancy themselves reincarnations of Sitting Bull and Black Elk.
Robbie Robertson infused his solo albums with elements from Native American music, but I never went further than that.
Intrigued by those guys in the izakaya bar I did a search on the Internet and found out there’s quite a lively Native American hip-hop scene. Artists of note are Frank Waln, a very ouspoken political rapper, Tall Paul, who partly raps in the Ojibwe language and the above video is by a fellow named Supaman.
Which sounds like an Indonesian surname, not to mention the pseudonym of a certain blue-red-yellow clad Kryptonian, and I must say Supaman looks somewhat like a tourist attraction but musically I find him the most innovative and inventive of the artists I checked out so far.
Supaman mixes all kind of music genres and uses instruments I wouldn’t necessarily immediately associate with hiphop, like the flute and the Native American tambourine drum, and raps about racism and life on a reservation, which, according to him, is not that much different from life in a ghetto.
You can read an interview with Supaman here. (PB)
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