** Originally posted September 2021, but sometimes I tweak and re-bump up the HI54 homepage because… reduce, reuse, recycle, innit? **

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September 30th, 2021 was the first day that Canada started to try and officially recognize/acknowledge, as a nation, its dark and mostly ignored colonial past. I guess the leaders can only “out of sight, out of mind” the people for so long… especially when your country is built on a foundation of genocide & land/resource theft, with literally THOUSANDS of unmarked graves scattered throughout your provinces at specific types of “schools”. They’re calling it the National Day for Truth & Reconciliation, and, I suppose, it’s at least a much needed across-the-nation conversation starter.

Of course, Canada’s past colonialism/imperialism not only laid the foundation for who currently has control of all the land & resources, which a national holiday like this does not attempt to address, but the racism and oppression and exploitation in the system is also still very much going on in the present (which should be obvious to anyone paying attention to how Indigenous land protectors are treated, not to mention how there are still reserves in 2̶0̶2̶1̶ 2022 without access to clean drinking water, which is something that EVERYBODY now knows about and still nothing happens and et cetera), so this new bank holiday kinda feels a bit like:

“Wow… can you believe how horrible the same people that are in power now used to be back then? Awful, awful stuff :( :( :( Anyways, it’s so good that all that bad stuff is totally over and we can all just say we’ve learned our lesson, put on an orange shirt and agree that we’re all equally, sorry for all the bad things that happened in the past, whatever they may be / will continue to be going forward… I know, let’s have a paid day off for people who don’t work ‘essential' jobs and then how about everybody gets back to this slightly more woke (aka: better pr) version of Colonial Capitalism the very next day! Huzzah!”

But maybe that’s just the tired cynic in me. I know (and can feel) that it’s good that more people are at least starting to talk out loud & in public about all this stuff. As someone who grew up in Canada (and Catholic), I can assure you that nobody was having any of these conversations back when I was going to school in a pretty openly racist towards Indigenous rural Alberta culture of the 80s/90s (a time when Residential Schools were still somehow allowed to be up & running, although I honestly don’t ever remember learning anything about those “schools”, especially in regards to their reality). Talk about living in a white-washed society (thank goodness for the internet and the ability to work on ones own ignorance!).

Not only has my exposure to true Indigenous history been lacking (fwiw I’ve been trying to fix that as an adult, and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that anybody who is interested in changing the system while listening to Indigenous viewpoints go check out ‘The Red Deal’), my ‘white guy’ headphones have also had a blindspot going when it comes to Indigenous music/artists. Especially from the very land where I was born and currently live. Turtle Island. So, I spent a very good chunk of Canada’s first National Day for Truth & Reconciliation doing a deep dive on music/artists with Indigenous roots—mainly North America, because my SOUTH OF AMERICA playlist is already mostly Indigenous—and, eventually, after a whole bunch of googling and wiki-ing, I ended up with a pretty sweet 95-track Indigenous playlist put together.

Ok, I also took a lunch break to watch the last episode of Reservation Dogs first season (which I highly recommend you watch too).

Going forward, I’ll try and keep my radar up for more Indigenous artists and add new stuff to this modern mix cd on a somewhat regular basis, with new stuff getting added near the top & older tracks removed from the bottom to keep the total count at a nice, even 95. Which means you can also find this playlist in the daily programming options for the ‘pretend, for real’ mountain town DIY radio station MountownFM that HI54 collaborates on with mountown internet cousin 95EH (hence the 95 total tracks).

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And if your ears are liking what they’re hearing in the above digital mix cds, it would probably be a good idea to like/follow/listen over on Spotify so you can get future updates auto-magically appearing on your listening device throughout the year. And, as always, when you hear something you like, do the universe some good and support/check those artists out further (every little bit helps).

Speaking of which, here’s a few ‘available-on-Bandcamp’ gems that have been recently featured in this ongoing playlist:

SHUFFLE UP’D 8

But they’re not the only tracks you could go from discovering on a streaming service that pays artists fractions of pennies to directly supporting on a site like Bandcamp, which is one of the many reasons why I keep a Buy Music Club list going for all the tracks that get added to my INDIGENOUS IN DA HEADPHONES playlist that are also available on Bandcamp (at the time of me checking) — so go check that list of headphone treats out whenever you find yourself wanting to reward your ears while also sending out support to those who help keep our lives nicely soundtracked (comes in especially handy on Bandcamp Fridays fyi, for all those who celebrate):

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Because the Corporate Streamers™ of the world are great for discovering and keeping track of music + streaming tools allow us to easily choose better soundtracks throughout the day than what Corporate FM™ radio stations used to drill us into submission with before the internet arrived in everyone’s pocket, but the way creators are paid out with streaming is just not very good/fair at all —ESPECIALLY in comparison to what some are making off of providing access to other people’s art.

Ideally, smart artist/human-minded people will start making some more momentum towards coming up with a better/fairer streaming model (here’s my contribution to the dialogue), but, for now, us appreciators of creativity/good things need to start doing a better job of being a bit more mindful of making sure we’re continuing to show direct support to the creation of good things. And Bandcamp is still one of the best online places going for intentionally & directly supporting the makers of the music you like (and then you get to carry around your music collection in your pocket).

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Anyways, I HOPE YOU HEAR A FEW THINGS YOU’LL LIKE ENOUGH TO GO INVEST MORE TIME WITH BACK IN YOUR PERSONAL ORBIT, BUT IF YOU FIND YOU’RE ACTuALLY IN THE MOOD FOR A DIFFERENT ‘95 TRACKs from 95 different artists’ SOUNDTRACK THAN THE ONE ABOVE, have a flick thru this carousel of MOUN.TOWN/FM diy programming & give a listen to whatever catches your fancy:

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OR SEARCH “MOUN.TOWN/FM” ON SPOTIFY TO BROWSE THE FULL COLLECTION OF #MOUNTOWNFM PLAYLISTS (BECAUSE THERE’S MORE THAN WHAT THE ABOVE CAROUSEL CAN HANDLE — AND EVERY ACCOMPANYING BLOG POST COMES WITH AVAILABLE-ON-BANDCAMP EMBEDS/ARCHIVES)

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And here’s hoping this year we’ll be better than the last \m/

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JEREMY / @HI54LOFI

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