Singin' the Blues comes naturally in Indian Country

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Featured on the CD cover of the album, Skintight Blues: First Peoples' Blues Compilation, is a beefy-faced, barrel-chested guy blowing on a saxophone, with a string of colorful beads flowing from him like musical notes.

It's an apt cover, representing how the harmony between the Native experience and the blues musical tradition draws many talented Native musicians into playing rhythm and blues.

Ted Whitecalf, president of Sweet Grass Records and a multiple Juno and Aboriginal Music Award-winning producer, who is distributing Skintight Blues, had little trouble finding 14 musicians from Canada and the United States to feature in his latest musical venture.

"I'm really excited about the album," Whitecalf said. "There's a lot of good blues artists out there. I'm happy to be able to pull together all the artists and to have people say, 'gee, I didn't know these guys existed'."

A long time blues enthusiast, Whitecalf, who lives in Saskatchewan, was in Toronto on May 18, and checked out the latest Rez Bluez showcase, featuring performers Murray Porter and Arthur Renwick. Whitecalf said he's not alone among Native people in his love of the blues.

"I think our people have always been country-blues oriented," said Whitecalf. "The African American blues artists and the Indian people who listen to the music have gone through the same oppression. It's a similar kind of story."

Veteran blues singer from the Six Nations, Murray Porter, whose song "Colours," from his 1995 album 1492, Who Found Who?, is featured on Skintight Blues, agreed that the storytelling behind the blues is key for him.

"My feeling is that original blues was a storytelling medium, they used the blues to tell a story," Porter said. "And in our Iroquois culture, we never had a written language; everything was told in stories and legends. It was all passed down orally."

Renwick, from the Haisla Nation near Kitamaat, B.C., who made his solo debut opening for Porter, put it another way.

"The story is really important to me and the music is just what supports that," he said. "It's the bed that the story lays on."

They say that the best stories are the ones that elevate our spirit.

According to Whitecalf, that's exactly what blues music does.

"When I feel down, I listen to the blues, and it brings me up," said Whitecalf, laughing. "Two negatives make a positive, eh?"