Rock Meets Indian Tradition

After years as an underground figure, John Trudell has good reason for feeling that his “world is in a whirl” these days.

The poet-performer, who appears with his Graffitiman band at At My Place in Santa Monica tonight, played prominent roles in two Michael Apted-directed movies that were released this year: the Robert Redford-produced documentary “Incident at Oglala” and the drama “Thunderheart” (starring Val Kilmer and Sam Shepard).

Both were centered on clashes between Indians and government agencies and among Indian factions at the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota. Trudell was involved in the action as national chairman of the activist American Indian Movement from 1973 to 1979.

On the music front, the recent “AKA Graffitiman” album release on Rykodisc ends Trudell’s long quest for greater exposure for his musical work. The collection is drawn from four cassette albums Trudell originally distributed by mail order.

Trudell, 46, turned to writing as therapy after a 1979 house fire claimed the lives of his wife, three children and mother-in-law. He suffered another major loss four years ago with the death of Jesse Ed Davis, the Indian rock guitarist who persuaded Trudell to begin setting his words to rock ‘n’ roll in 1985.

“I very personally feel Jesse’s absence, but he opened the door to a musical form,” Trudell said recently at his manager’s Studio City home.

The L.A.-based Trudell had recorded “Tribal Voice,” a cassette of poems backed by traditional Indian singing and percussion, before joining forces with Davis and recording the original “aka Graffitiman” cassette. That 1986 release won Trudell a number of prominent admirers, including Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson and Jackson Browne.

The music on the new Rykodisc collection reflects the original intention of Davis and Trudell to combine rock ‘n’ roll and Indian musical elements.

“We wanted to preserve Jesse’s work as much as possible,” Trudell explained. “Sometimes if people hear that Jesse or I are Indian, they have images in their mind of what musically we would be and I wanted to escape that preconception.

“It was a challenge to lay it right out there--’This is as Indian as this particular album gets.’ These are an accumulation of our feelings and views and for this one, we didn’t put on the beads and feathers. We just used the communication of music, thought and words.”

“AKA Graffitiman” is based on Trudell’s perceptions of the experiences of the baby-boom generation. While the music is straightforward guitar-dominated rock ‘n’ roll, Trudell’s spoken vocal delivery and political lyrics (along with his Pine Ridge tangles with authorities) suggest a kinship with rap. He views the current Sister Souljah/Ice-T controversy as part of an “elaborate manipulation” to mask political problems by creating and exploiting racial divisions.

“I see rap as one of those very necessary infusions of energy--human feelings literally from the soul,” Trudell said. “Whatever I’m doing with spoken word is my attempt at putting an infusion of energy into music. . . . But I would not imitate rap because it’s not a natural style for me.”

Trudell also indicated he was satisfied with “Incident at Oglala” and “Thunderheart” for “addressing truths,” and with the positive response his shows have received from Indian audiences.

“The elders and traditionalists are not going to jump on my case for (doing) this because they understand evolution and they understand the contemporary reality that we’re in,” Trudell said. “The tradition is not a rigid thing. We’re gaining certain abilities or knowledge so we can continue our evolution without losing who we are, our identities.”