Bizhiki — a made-in-Wisconsin collaboration between Dylan Bizhikiins Jennings, Joe Rainey Sr., and multi-instrumentalist S. Carey (Bon Iver) — shares the new single/video, ‘Unbound,’ from their new album Unbound, out July 19th via Jagjaguwar. Following lead single ‘Gigawaabamin (Come Through)’ featuring Mike Sullivan, the title track of the album is exemplary of Bizhiki’s unique cultural and musical intersection.
The song begins with an electronically modified hand drum accentuated by a plaintive piano chord, leading into a somber warning sung by Carey: “Be calm when she speaks/she speaks the truth, unbound.” The words were pulled by Carey from Rainey’s notebook, right in the studio. “I wrote those lines around a string of tornadoes and hurricanes — this wrath of mother nature that was hitting everybody,” Rainey says. “There was so much relief needed for people who were displaced, so many people out there hurting.” Carey’s warning is joined to an urgent topline sung by Bizhikiins Jennings, as arresting as it is beautiful.
The video for ‘Unbound’ was directed by Finn Ryan and features dancer Indaanis Demain alongside the group. “Gichigami and Anishinaabeg have long been intertwined in a relationship rooted in reciprocity and respect, which continues to this day,” Ryan explains. “On her shores we continue to sing and make offerings, carrying out ancient responsibilities tied to culture and place. Be calm when she speaks, she speaks the truth out loud.”
Unbound opens with a single, trembling chord that rises and descends before meeting a warm, beguiling voice, a voice singing in a tradition that’s been heard in Northern Wisconsin river country for millennia. The music that follows is a soulful dialogue between the ancient tradition of powwow singing and a contemporary musical palette. Unbound sees the powwow style entwined with synthesized voice modulation, and hand drumming accented with electronic samples and beats. The harmonies and resonances on this album are equal parts cultural and musical.
Many of the songs on this album go back to when the spirit of the Bizhiki was forged, nearly a decade ago, on the banks of Wisconsin’s Chippewa River at Eaux Claires festival in 2015, and came together over the course of years in between several projects from Bizhiki members, including two solo album releases. Both Joe Rainey’s Niineta and S. Carey’s Break Me Open were released in 2022, and the artists have been busy touring their projects. Bizhikiins Jennings has also been committed to a robust schedule of speaking and teaching engagements —he’s in the final stage of his pursuit of a PhD at UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies — in addition to his singing in powwow groups, both locally and internationally.
Bizhiki: Unbound is the recipient of an inaugural Wisconsin Special Projects Grant from Ruth Foundation for the Arts. The project is one of ten selected from a pool of over 80 applicants; selections were made by a national panel of jurors. Project collaborators will develop and tour a multidisciplinary music and video performance, engaging audiences throughout Wisconsin about contemporary Ojibwe culture at live shows in 2024 and 2025. The project will make great efforts to both support revitalization within Tribal communities and enhance understanding in non-Tribal communities.
Watch/Stream ‘Gigawaabamin (Come Through) (feat. Mike Sullivan)’
Unbound Tracklist
- Franklin Warrior
- Unbound
- SGC
- She’s All We Have
- Rez News
- Nashke!
- Float Back By
- Trying To Live
- Gigawaabamin (Come Through) (feat. Mike Sullivan)
- Call Me Home
- 11. Medicine River
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