MUSIC

BY j . poet

Primeaux and Mike
Following their own vision

Primeaux and Mike
sing ceremonial
peyote songs of the
Native American
Church—in harmony.

72 N ATIVE PEOPLES

Vcrdcll Primeaux and Johnny Mike,
the two voices of Primeaux and
Mike, sing the ceremonial peyote
songs of the Native American
Church, and over the past decade
they've brought the
beauty of peyote
singing to the ears of
non-Indians as well.
Many hospitals, nursing homes and rehabilitation
centers
around the world use
their albums to facilitate healing. Robbie
Robertson asked the
duo to join him on
his Contact From the
Underworld of Red
Boy album, and two
of their songs appear on the soundtrack of Oliver Stone's movie Any
Given Sunday, starring Ai Pacino.
One reason for their success may
be that Primeaux and Mike sing in
harmony, which is unusual for Native
music. After all, the music isn't harmonic in the strict European sense.
'This style of singing came to me in
a dream," Primeaux explained. "It's
a two-in-one system. There are two
voice patterns and two melodies,
making one harmony. Some musicians from the Western system tell
me they'd like to use my style for
their music, but when they try to
write it out in Western notation, they
can't figure it out." Primeaux chuckled softly. "It took me almost ten
years of research to be able to make
this music, but it's caught young
people's interest. Many young
[Indians] aren't into politics or
church, but the music gets them."
Primeaux is Oglala/Yankton
Sioux and Ponca. As a child he was

sickly, and he credits his survival to
the peyote ceremony. "When I was a
baby, my organs and bones were diseased," Primeaux said. "The doctors
gave up on me, but my dad was a
man of faith, so he set out from St.
Paul, where we lived at that time, to
Texas, to harvest medicine. Peyote
was illegal then, but he managed to
bring back some medicine and a man
who knew how to do the ceremony."
After the ceremony, Primeaux was
playing like a normal two-year-old;
the doctors were amazed. "They
called it a miracle. To me, it was
proof God exists and that our medicine works."
When- Primeaux was in high
school, he had another life-changing
peyote experience. "I took too much
medicine one dme and communicated with the higher power. When I
came out of it, I had the ability to
construct Native American church
songs. In those days, hardly anyone
my age composed music, they
looked at the elders for that, but I
took initiative to bring in a new
singing style."
Primeaux worked on his music
while finishing high school and
going to university to study police
science, although he was finally
drawn to community service and
became a youth and substance-abuse
counselor. When he married—his
wife is Navajo—he moved to Black
Mesa, Arizona.
Primeaux met Johnny Mike in
1988, and they began singing
together almost immediately. "We
always say we lived together in a previous life," Primeaux said. "We have
similar voices and have never said a
cross word to each other. He lives
next door to me now, and his wife is

my wife's younger sister, and our relationship just gets better every day."
Last year, Primeaux and Mike's
Peyote Songs of the Native American
Church (Canyon) won a Native
American Music Award for best traditional album, but after a decade of
traditional music making, the duo is
getting ready to branch out. "We're
going to take our work in a contemporary direction on our next album,"
Primeaux said. "We're putting a
band together and we'll mix traditional music with pop and rock, and
see if we can interact with other cultures. We don't know what's ahead
of us, we just put our faith in the
higher power and follow our vision."

Shadowvze
If you don't pay attention, "Murder
in Our Backyard" might be mistaken
for another smooth bit of "gangsta"
pop, but when the lyrics kick in, you
realize that Shadowvze has put an
important message in the music.
"My lyrics advocate for human
rights," said the young rapper, also
known as Shawn Enfinger, who is of
Cherokee and Creek lineage. "We
write about the situations the government would like swept under the
rug like the Zapatista rebellion in
Chiapas, and Leonard Peltier's situation. They say a picture is worth a
[thousand] words; I think good
words with a good sound can change
a million minds."
Enfinger grew up in western
Florida and has had an omnivorous
musical appetite for as long as he can
remember. "Rock, rap, blues, traditional Native, it's all music to my
ears," Enfinger said. He started rapping and performing ten years ago,
first with a group called Posse in
Effect, and later as a solo act. A few
years ago, Enfinger began collaborating with producer Vaughn Wilson,
who has also worked with Oakland's
Too Short and funk legend George
Clinton. Together, they have put
together a booming, "Miami bass"like sound that fuses elements of
pop, techno, hip-hop and traditional