Giving thanks for Native American musical/cultural heritage.

We start off a KBOO Thanksgiving Day special this morning with music of Native America, focusing on a brand new release from Light in the Attic records,  "Native North America, Vol.1: Aboringinal Folk, Rock & Country, 1966-1985." We'll hear most of the folk/acoustic songs from the three LP/two CD collection.

From the Light in the Attic page for the album:
Largely unheard, criminally undocumented, but at their core, utterly revolutionary, the recordings of the diverse North American Aboriginal community will finally take their rightful place in our collective history in the form of Native North America (Vol. 1): Aboriginal Folk, Rock, and Country 1966–1985. An anthology of music that was once near-extinct and off-the-grid is now available for all to hear, in what is, without a doubt, Light In The Attic’s most ambitious and historically significant project in the label’s 12-year journey.

Native North America (Vol. 1) features music from the Indigenous peoples of Canada and the northern United States, recorded in the turbulent decades between 1966 to 1985. It represents the fusion of shifting global popular culture and a reawakening of Aboriginal spirituality and expression. The majority of this material has been widely unavailable for decades, hindered by lack of distribution or industry support and by limited mass media coverage, until now. You’ll hear Arctic garage rock from the Nunavik region of northern Quebec, melancholy Yup’ik folk from Alaska, and hushed country blues from the Wagmatcook First Nation reserve in Nova Scotia. You’ll hear echoes of Neil Young, Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Johnny Cash, and more among the songs, but injected with Native consciousness, storytelling, poetry, history, and ceremony.

The stories behind the music presented on Native North America (Vol. 1) range from standard rock-and-roll dreams to transcendental epiphanies. They have been collected with love and respect by Vancouver-based record archaeologist and curator Kevin “Sipreano” Howes in a 15-year quest to unearth the history that falls between the notes of this unique music. Tirelessly, Howes scoured obscure, remote areas for the original vinyl recordings and the artists who made them, going so far as to send messages in Inuktitut over community radio airwaves in hopes that these lost cultural heroes would resurface.

For the whole blurb on "Native North America, Vol. 1" go to:

http://lightintheattic.net/releases/1332-native-north-america-vol-1-aboriginal-folk-rock-and-country-1966-1985

And here's a review also just out about it:
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19986-various-artists-native-north-america-vol-1-aboriginal-folk-rock-and-country-19661985/