Acoustic Aboriginal Blues Folk Music

8 MP3 Songs
BLUES: Acoustic Blues, WORLD: Native American



Details:
'Touchwood Hills' just received preliminary nominations for 5 awards at the Aboriginal People's Choice Music Awards held at the MTS Center in Winnipeg, Manitoba Nov 3, 2006. Go to www.aboriginalpeopleschoice.com to vote!

Shakti Hayes is a Plains Cree woman from Saskatchewan who has been playing and singing since she first picked up a bass guitar in the twelfth grade. Since then, she has performed with Gerald Charlie and The Black Owl Blues Band, with Juno-nominated artist Wayne Lavallee and with CAMA Award winning aboriginal women's ensemble Nitsiwakun (Sandy Scofield and Lisa Sazama), among others. Shakti grew up listening to Otis Redding, Van Morrison and Pink Floyd on her father's LPs; she also finds inspiration in Top 40s pop from the 1980s and 90s, and singer-songwriters like Lucinda Williams, Buffy Saint Marie and Rob Thomas. On her new album 'Touchwood Hills', she weaves those influences together with a long-standing oral tradition, setting her own personal stories to powerful music. On the title track, she sings about the journey back to the reservation where her mother was born and raised, and her discovery there of a family and history she didn't know she had. In 'Buffalo Drop', the story of a brother who died young is set against the backdrop of her people's ancestral hunting grounds in the Qu'Apelle Valley. Shakti writes songs that are as evocative as they are unpredicatble...songs that get into the listener's head and heart, and stay there. Joy, raw pain, healing memory...when Shakti Hayes sings, she bears her soul - and people listen.