Cherokee Musicians Featured in New Album with N.C. Artists
This article appeared in the Cherokee One Feather on February 1, 2023.
By Brooklyn Brown, One Feather Reporter
ASHEVILLE, N.C.— Blue Ridge Music Trails released an album in November of 2023 titled, “Fine Tuned: Volume One” featuring artists from western North Carolina to highlight the musical traditions of the region. Keaw’e Bone and Jarrett Wildcatt, members of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), collaborated on a song on the album titled, “Three Demons.”
Bone and Wildcatt have been Cherokee musicians for many years. “I’ve been playing acoustic guitar for over fourteen years and playing the flute for over ten,” Wildcatt said. “Chuck Crowe from the Yellowhill Community taught me basic chords and we’d jam on my grandma’s front porch. I am mostly self-taught in the flute. I learned the basic pentatonic scale and learned to play with feeling.”
Bone commented, “I’ve learned under the tutelage of John John Grant for quite some time since I was a kid. He’s taught me how to sing and powwow and our songs and traditional social dances,” Bone said. “I play flute and sing with a rattle or sing with a drum, or if I don’t have a drum, I play on my belly. Just whatever I have available.”
“Three Demons” is Bone and Wildcatt’s first collaboration together as artists. “I’ve never wrote anything in English before. I told Jarrett, “Whatever’s on your heart, I want you to play it.” So, he started playing his guitar, and I just started writing down words that were coming to me and images and pictures,” Bone said. “We probably went through ten or twelve songs before we really started working on one that had the gravitas to really be on the album.”
The pair complemented each other well on the track. “I really like the duality of everything. So, I wanted Jarrett to play something that he was really excited about and that had a happy, rhythmic tone. He was good at matching that energy, which allowed me the space to get my emotions out,” Bone said.
The song is a high energy tune with harrowing lyricism, “I started the song talking about my auntie who had died from cancer. I was thinking about her and having these lucid experiences of remembrance of her, or maybe not even remembrance, but creating new memories and having her present in the moment in my mind. And then it turned into a processing of my three demons that I must keep in check: women, alcohol, and violence. There’s a line in there that says, “I don’t know who I am when you are near,” and that speaks to all three demons. It’s just an impactful song for me, and I’m not sure if anybody likes it, but I don’t think that’s the point of this music. It was just to get it out because it couldn’t stay.”
Wildcatt noted the importance of sharing their Indigenous perspective on the album. “I feel like it’s important to take up as much “Indigenous space” as possible to let people know that we don’t just sing powwow songs, flute music, or anything stereotypical. Some of my favorite Indigenous singer/songwriters are Aysanabee and Logan Staats.”
As musicians who sing in Cherokee language, the duo had to find a way to infuse their Cherokee identity while writing in English. “If I’m using their language, I want to use the terms of their language to match mine and my ancestors’ passions. I want to unfold the existence of my ancestors in my life, and if I’m incapable of doing it in my language, I’m going to do it in theirs.”
Wildcatt hopes that their music will encourage support for Indigenous artists, “Please continue to support Indigenous musicians and artists. We’re in a time now where Native people can tell their own story, and don’t have to rely on outsiders to do it for us.”
Purchase the album at Fine Tuned – Blue Ridge Music Trails (blueridgemusicnc.com)
