Joe Rainey: Niineta
With Andrew Broder, Owls, orchestration by William Brittelle, and visual art by Isaac Gale
Copresented with The Cedar Cultural Center
Thu, Jan 26
7 pm doors // 7:30 pm show
The Cedar Cultural Center
In partnership with Radio K
Copresented with Cedar Cultural Center
Commissioned by The Great Northern, Cedar Cultural Center, and Ecstatic Music Festival
“You’ve never heard anything quite like Joe Rainey’s avant-garde Pow Wow music.” —Pitchfork
Niineta, Joe Rainey’s debut album on 37d03d, is a landmark in modern Indigenous music. These are bold, electrifying songs that recontextualize the ancient Pow Wow sound in strange, new in-between places. Each note conveys a clear message, no matter the inflection: We’re still here. The songs that make up Niineta (translated from Ojibwe, meaning ‘Just Me’) start with Andrew Broder’s churning avant-garde beats, configured and hand-made to support Joe’s original melodies, tunes written from a lifetime of competitive Pow Wow singing and drum group archiving. All of this is embraced by and interwoven with celestial strings, arranged by Broder and William Brittelle, performed by “dream group” (The New York Times) Owls, giving Joe’s melodies an ecstatic lift. Visuals for the show will be provided by experimental filmmaker Isaac Gale, who has collaborated with Rainey, Broder, and Brittelle on multiple projects.
About the artists
JOE RAINEY SR. (vocals, field recordings) is an enrolled member of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians in Northern Minnesota. Joe was born and raised in South Minneapolis and has been a resident of Wisconsin for the last 11 years. Joe is a father of five. He is a well-traveled pow-wow singer and pow-wow music archivist. He has traveled with Midnite Express and Iron Boy singers, also from Minnesota. Recently, he has worked and performed with Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Marijuana Deathsquads, Trever Hagen, Spank Rock (Naeem), LOW, and Andrew Broder. He attributes his love and knowledge of music and Native music to his grandmother Ruth, his past music teachers in school, and to older drum brothers / drum teachers. His focus now is to ensure the transmission of the teaching cycle of pow-wow singing and protocol to the next generation.
ANDREW BRODER (electronics, arrangements) has dedicated the better part of his life to carving out a singular path in music and art. A life-long resident of Minneapolis, Andrew has done time as a cutting battle DJ, challenging and thoughtful improviser, soundtrack composer, working sideman, producer, remixer, beat-maker, poet, beauty creator, brutal noise-monger, and above all a fearless, restless, and provocative songwriter. In recent years, he has been more productive than ever, expanding his circle of connected artists even wider, and expanding his sensibilities into the visual realm as a painter. His work is a study in surprise and defying expectation. With his records as Fog, he redefined the turntable as a compositional tool, and his contributions since to avant hip-hop, rock, jazz, and noise have been equally engaging and envelope-pushing. He has released records on renowned indie labels, such as Ninja Tune, Lex, and Totally Gross National Product, and worked with an incredibly wide ranging cast of artists, such as Bon Iver, Polica, Marijuana Deathsquads, Dua Saleh, FPA, Armand Hammer, Serengeti, The National, Dave King, and countless others.
WILLIAM BRITTELLE (string arrangements) is a Brooklyn-based, genre-fluid composer, producer, and creator of hyper-text and multimedia. An avid collaborator, Brittelle has worked with a number of artists across multiple disciplines, including Roomful of Teeth, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), Bryce Dessner, Kanye West, Son Lux, Oneohtrix Point Never, A Far Cry, Lower Dens, Duran Duran, Wye Oak, La Force, Gail Ann Dorsey, the Seattle, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Alabama, Grand Rapids, and North Carolina Symphony Orchestras, the Basel Sinfonietta, the Nu Deco Ensemble, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His latest full-length LP entitled Spiritual America featuring Wye Oak, the Metropolis Ensemble, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, was released by Nonesuch/New Amsterdam in 2019. His previous release, Loving the Chambered Nautilus featuring ACME (the American Contemporary Music Ensemble) was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered. Prior releases were profiled in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, MUSO, and The New Yorker. Increasingly active as a producer, upcoming and recent projects include albums with Alex Temple/Julia Holter/Spektral Quartet, vocalist/percussionist Jodie Landau, saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, vocalist Holland Andrews, violinist Michi Wiancko, keyboardist Erika Dohi, and Roomful of Teeth.
OWLS (ensemble) is a quartet collective drawing from a deep well of musical passions and backgrounds, defying expectations and labels with original, visceral, and personal performances. Each an artistic force in their own right, violinist Alexi Kenney, violist Ayane Kozasa, cellist Gabriel Cabezas and cellist-composer Paul Wiancko share an uncommonly fierce creative spirit which drives the quartet to challenge the way meaningful concert experiences are conceived. While weaving together new compositions with original arrangements of music ranging from the 1600s to the present, Owls’ distinctive instrumentation allows them access to beautiful and exhilarating new sound worlds—effectively guaranteeing that each performance is uniquely them and without limits.
ISAAC GALE (visuals) is a filmmaker and musician from Minneapolis. Since 2005, he has directed more than 100 music videos and numerous documentary and experimental short films. His first documentary short film, Sweet Crude Man Camp, screened at film festivals around the world, winning several awards including “Best Documentary Short” at Edindocs and Indie Memphis. He was a 2016/17 McKnight Media Artist Fellow.