songs about Amerindians
INDIAN SUNSET by Elton John
« Indian Sunset » was inspired by a visit lyricist Bernie Taupin made to a reservation. Narrated by an unnamed Native American, this emotive ballad which runs to 6 minutes 47 seconds, is about the end of a way of life as the colonization of the vast American continent by the White Man leads inevitably to the subjugation and near extinction of its former masters.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrAwGjM0gR4[/youtube]
NOC A HOMA by Black Lips
This song tells the story of Chief Noc-A-Homa, the former mascot for the Atlanta Braves baseball team (as in Chief « knock a homer »). Frontman Cole Alexander explained this ode to the drunken Native Indian in an interview with Spin magazine: « The guy who acted as the mascot was a real Native American and he used to do prayer dances on the pitcher’s mound. A lot of the other Native Americans were bummed out on him. Apparently he drank a lot and would pass out in this teepee that was part of his shtick. He was just a nice guy who rooted for the team. He eventually got fired for running around the field drunk. »
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLBw0iXBEuo[/youtube]
INDIAN RESERVATION by Paul Revere and the Raiders
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ6RjP7MlXk[/youtube]
The song is about the plight of the Cherokee Indians, who in 1791 were displaced from their home in Georgia to a reservation in Oklahoma. Raiders frontman Mark Lindsay, whose ancestry was part Indian, thought that this would be a good song to record. (thanks, Bertrand – Paris, France)
The group was formerly known as Paul Revere and the Raiders. This song became not just their biggest hit, but the best-selling single for Columbia Records. Isn’t it ironic that a song like this, brimming with simmering rage and an implied threat to retake the land for the natives, was written by a white Country songwriter, recorded by a band named after the white European patriots whose colonization of the US took the land from the Cherokees in the first place, and sold by Columbia Records, a company originating as « Columbia Graphophone Company » in the UK?
