Photo credit: Peter Wallace

Nahko and Medicine for the People, Britt Fest, Jacksonville, OR- 7/22

Entering the Cascadia region of his home turf, Nahko Bear, an Oregon native of Puerto Rican, Native American (Apache) and Filipino descent, stepped onto the Britt Festival stage in Jacksonville, Oregon, waved to his Mom and greeted the audience with, “What’s up tribe?” This immediately incited the typical sit-down audience to their feet, where most remained the duration of the night.

Nahko and Medicine for the People is a six-man band whose message of conscious cultural change powered the eclectic music. Gentle rockers, hard-hitting devotional chanters, musically inspired poets, spiritual rebel rappers… They melded worlds of music designed to inspire change and unite people, with intense spoken word poetry in a hip-hop, folk rock, Hawaiian-flavored, carrying case of social injustice and disgruntled indigenous voices. Nahko encapsulated the feel of this hybridized music in “Make A Change” when he sang vehemently, yelled, spat, barely held himself together as a solid thing without shattering to a million particles at what were previously feet, screaming, “Do no harm, but take no shit!” then returned, in a breath, to beautiful harmony.

Chase Makai on a 12-string guitar, Pato on bass and Justin Chittams’ enthusiasm on drums held a high-octane container for Nahko to lay vocal tread, as well as keys and electric guitar. The most impressive instrumental skill of musicality was displayed by Tim Snider on the electric violin during an intro to “Great Spirit.” The depth of an upright bass emerged, out of that tiny instrument, from a violent and slow walk of firm fingers close to the string roots. A bow stretched across it in long pressured lifetimes then sped to a pace that rivaled a flea infested canine ear scratch. Snider looped and built each layer, pinned it down and burned it to ecstatic fire; squeezing sound out of deliberate pockets that had never known moonlight.

The rest of the band returned to stage and jumped up and down in synchronized time on invisible trampolines, radiated glowing smiles, clearly amped up on what they were doing. All the while Nahko’s spoken words wove through the music, telling a poetic onslaught of the beautiful broken world we inhabit. The positive message, born from genuine heart, anger and disillusionment, was valuable and effective.

I found myself chilled listening to the words of a new song, debuted at the show, with Nahko solo on vocals and keys. Begging for, “Peace in America, be decent America.” Asking American’s to simply stop killing each other. They covered heavy topics in most every song—stripping down cultural blindfolds, imbedded through generations—and wrapped it in upbeat, high energy, hip-hop, rock rhythms, making it palatable for a wide audience. There was power, fight, anger, raw honest beauty and so much gratitude it shook my heart to quiver and stretch.

They played “I Mua” with a sexy interlude of TLC’s “No Scrubs” and Marley’s, “Get Up, Stand Up,” swallowed within the song, then passed introductions of the band around the stage. Each man introduced the man next to him with great kindness, excitement and respect. They ended with a call and response to “What a Beautiful Life” interspersed with snippets of other personal popular hits. Chittams threw his drumsticks into the audience, someone waved a shirt in a circle over their head, arms ejected to the sky and they bounced to the front of the stage for a group bow.

Nahko summed it up at the end of the show in a preaching rant that ran past the allotted time saying, “I hope our songs have offered you some peace and inspiration. You all have a job. Maybe you don’t know what it is yet…that’s okay. Maybe you’re resisting it…that’s okay, too. What kind of planet do you want to leave your children?” He continued on this line of thought for a stretch talking about the importance of letting go of the divide between people, building inspiring language to a pinnacle where he ended by saying something like: you know… stuff. It’s big. Then laughed. “I chose my words wisely there. Well, shit, let them figure it out.” With that authentic, human moment of imperfection he left it to the audience to wake up and inspire ourselves to action. He claims, “This is the soundtrack of the movement for a better planet.” I hope he’s right.