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Northern Cree
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Northern Cree, also known as the Northern Cree Singers, is a powwow and Round Dance group from Maskwacis in the Canadian province of Alberta. Randy Wood founded the group in 1982, together with his brothers Charlie and Earl Wood of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation. The members come from the Treaty 6 area. The group consists of singers who sit around one large drum. That is the core of powwow music: voices and the beat on the skin, without the usual line-up of a pop band.
Music and breakthrough
Northern Cree regularly performed at folk festivals and powwows in Canada and the United States. They won hundreds of championship titles at powwow competitions. It is the only traditional Canadian Indigenous group to have been nominated for a Grammy. In 2017, with founder Randy Wood and singer Tanya Tagaq, it won a Juno Award for the album Going Home Star. Its own records include Dancerz Groove (2012), It's a Cree Thing (2016) and When It's Cold (2019).
Influence
For the history of pop this group is important because it lets us hear a living tradition that arose far outside popular music, and yet is heard on modern records and festival stages. The course features the Jingle Dress Song, a song that belongs to a dance in which women dance in dresses hung with metal jingles. That connection is fixed in the name of the song. About the details of the dance itself this page says nothing, because the local source file is silent on that point.
Listening
Jingle Dress Song · Northern Cree, 1991
Discography
Studio albums
- 2012Dancerz Groove
- 2016It's a Cree Thing
- 2019When It's Cold
- 2025Get Your Feathers Ready
- ?Drums in the Pines
- ?mîyo kekisepa, Make a Stand
- ?Nîtisânak Brothers and Sister
- ?Ôskimacîtahowin: A New Beginning