From left, DJ NDN (Ian Campeau), DJ Bear Witness (Bear Thomas) and DJ Shub (Dan General).
“I wear moccasins, walk in beads, feathered hats. Which will go to prove, I’m an Indian too – oo – oo – oo – oo – oo.” Then the beat.
Babylon night club’s A Tribe Called Red took American disco group Don Armando’s 1979 tune I’m an Indian Too and refashioned it into an electro music head-banger.
DJ Diplo – who produced part of M.I.A.’s first album and is one half of Major Lazer – has noticed the Ottawa group. Jay-Z is tuning in as well.
A Tribe Called Red take First Nations drum songs, songs about First Nations people and movies about First Nations people, then re-edit them into psychedelic music videos to the crashing beats of dubstep music.
Dubstep music has rising and crashing computer-generated beats, which A Tribe Called Red fused to intricate melodic yelping and driving beats of Eastern and Central pow wow music.
The three DJs play a monthly show, Electric Pow Wow, at Babylon club on Bank Street.
A Tribe Called Red are Ottawa DJs Ian Campeau a.k.a. DJ NDN, Bear Thomas a.k.a. DJ Bear Witness and Dan General a.k.a. DJ Shub. NDN is Ojibwe First Nations, while Bear Witness and Shub are Cayuga First Nations. NDN has lived in Centretown for much of his life.
Bear Witness hails from Toronto. He teamed up with NDN to start A Tribe Called Red and the Electric Pow Wow.
In late 2008, NDN, Bear Witness and two other First Nations DJs, wanted to showcase their First Nations talent. They formed a Tribe Called Red, and organized the Electric Pow Wow.
“We said the pow wow was geared toward, but not exclusive to, the native population. Anyone can come, but we did it for you,” says NDN.
That first night was a success.
“It was rammed . . . Babylon ran out of beer that night,” says NDN.
“It was students from up North, in remote communities, who came here for school and didn’t know anybody, and never went out, so this was the first time they felt comfortable,” says NDN.
“It affirmed for natives in Ottawa that they had something that was theirs."
A Tribe Called Red ran the pow wows for six months before Bear Witness and NDN invented another thing they couldn’t stop. One day, while mixing, NDN and Bear Witness put a pow wow song over an electronica beat.
“A light switch went off. We just said, ‘OK, we gotta do this,’ ” says NDN.
They had started a new kind of music. “People go crazy to the music,” says NDN.
As far as A Tribe Called Red know, no one has ever mixed First Nations music and electronica.
In 2009, DJ Shub joined A Tribe Called Red. Shub comes from Fort Erie. He is Cayuga First Nations and two-time champion of DMC, a world-wide hip-hop DJing and scratching competition.
Shub left hip-hop behind and has had to learn about electronica music since joining, but plans to stick around.
“It’s taken a little while to figure out what we needed and who’s gonna work together. We had to get the group right,” says Bear Witness.
This team has caught the ear of big names in electronica music. DJ Diplo blogged about A Tribe Called Red on his record company’s blog, Mad Decent.
“We just thought their music was really rad. DJ NDN sent us a few tracks and we were really feeling them so we posted them up!” says a representative from the Mad Decent blog.
Producer Mel Lewis, who’s worked with the Black Eyes Peas, The Roots and Lady Gaga, asked A Tribe Called Red to remix Willow Smith’s 21st Century Girl for Jay-Z.
Jay-Z didn’t choose the remix, but the attention was worth it, says NDN.
A Tribe Called Red has already released two online tracks and plan to release an album soon.