Ian “DJ NDN ” Campeau and Bear Witness of A Tribe Called Red (ATCR) first collaborated in 2007 with the idea of promoting themselves as indigenous DJs in the Ottawa area.
Ian “DJ NDN ” Campeau and Bear Witness of A Tribe Called Red (ATCR) first collaborated in 2007 with the idea of promoting themselves as indigenous DJs in the Ottawa area. The duo worked and partnered with other DJs, such as Dan “DJ Shub ” General, with the initial plan of just wanting to promote shows to the indigenous community in Ottawa since it hadn't been done before. Now ATCR is an international act, who are looked upon as providing the current soundtrack and voice for indigenous youth and culture. “We took those two simple ideas and posted our shows around the Aboriginal Youth Centre and the Native Centre in Ottawa and places in the community where we knew the community would be and it was a huge success for our first show - we were sold out for the show, ” Bear Witness said on the first time ATRC performed. “Indigenous people in Ottawa said to us, ‘you can't stop doing this now, we need you to do this, we need to have this space for ourselves.' Really it was from that initial support from the community that pushed us to keep going with this project.
“After that we decided to start making music and the whole electric powwow thing came from wanting to make music to give back to that community that was showing us so much love and support in Ottawa. Then we started to tour Winnipeg and around more at that point, but everything grew out of that first party. ”
The DJs continued to make a mark, with people noticing along the journey. One group who noticed the talent and originality ATCR offered was Sherpas Cinema, which used their track “Electric Pow Wow Drum ” for its 2013 ski movie release Into the Mind.
“They approached us and asked for the track for their video and when we saw it and the way that they mixed it with the Tibetan monks in there it was something else, ” Witness said. “To see the visuals and amazing footage was more than we expected. It opened us up to a whole new audience, people who hadn't heard of us all of a sudden got to check out our stuff, it was pretty huge for us, I don't know how many thousands of hits it got in the first day - something like 20,000 hits or something in 24 hours. ”
The group utilizes a variety of DJ gear and software, but aren't afraid to mix it up and try new ideas and tools.
“Our gear is much the same as on the road as when we're playing back here, ” Witness said. “Things have changed up a bit lately because we have a new member in our group, his name is Tool Man. The reason that we play the way that we do with three people on stage is because we had different equipment right from the start - one on turntables, one on CDJs and one on a midi controller and it became the way that we played. It became a necessity and became all that we played.
“With our new member Tool Man, he's not necessarily a DJ, he comes more on the production side of things - he's not actually DJing with us, he's using a Maschine to do a live remix with us on stage. I have been using a Denon midi controller, but I just changed my setup to use a Serato. I just started using Serato with CDJs as of our next performance. DJ NDN, he does the same thing and Tool Man is using the Maschine, which is a live production tool. ”
Witness says people who want to get into the DJ game have plenty of options without breaking the bank. “I definitely recommend a midi controller, one type or another for sure, ” said Witness. “You can get some midi controllers that are super cheap, that are down to a couple hundred dollars, and the software is usually free with it - that's the best way to go. Even just getting DJing software to begin with that you can just use on your computer is the way to learn, but I think getting those physical knobs, platters and faders and getting into all that is where you're really going to learn something. ”
ATCR has been outspoken on non-indigenous people showing up at festivals of late in headdresses.
“Yeah it happens in music culture because music is fashion where you're seeing it a lot right now and this idea of ‘red face' with people wearing headdress's and war paint. It's something that we still see at shows, I don't think it was particularly singled out at our shows but it's something we do see a lot, so we have said a lot about it and got a conversation going around the topic to the point where we played a festival last summer called Tall Tree out on Vancouver Island and they took it upon themselves say, ‘We're not going to allow any headdresses,' and they put it on their website, ‘headdresses will be confiscated at the gate,' with an explanation that they were creating a safe, comfortable environment for everybody and this was working against that, ” Witness said.
“We just played Bonnaroo and it was full of headdresses, but it was cool to see because there were all these people out there wearing these fake headdresses, jumping around and then there was this whole huge crew of native people who showed up who were holding up the Five Nations flag that represents my community. They're holding up the warriors flag in the audience and really representing themselves. Being there and being heard, making their presence known, and for us that drowned down all these silly hipster headdresses that were running around in the crowd and we got to push them back and after awhile we saw less and less of them. ”
A Tribe Called Red plays Canada Day with Shad and Holy F*@k at The Banff Centre's Shaw Amphitheatre.
