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TAHLEQUAH – Following its initial announcement earlier this year, Horton Records teamed up with Jeremy Charles to host an album release party for its debut all-Cherokee music album, “Anvdvnelisgi,” on September 3 during the 70th Cherokee National Day.
“Anvdvnelisgi” is a groundbreaking contemporary music album featuring original songs in the Cherokee language. The title of the album translates to “The Performer”.
Charles, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and owner of FireThief Works, said work on the album had been completed for nearly a year and a half.
“Honestly, it’s a relief and a celebration,” Charles said. “We’re super excited. All the work is done, now it’s time to have fun.”
Charles added that of the 12 artists on the album, 10 of them don’t speak Cherokee. Each works with fluent speakers and translators to translate their featured songs from English to Cherokee.
“It’s really fun for them because they work closely with people who are fluent in the language,” Charles said. “They translated from English and rewritten it to make it easier to sing and easier to understand, and they criticized the syllables all the way to recording day. Then we went through the language department’s approval process.”
Cherokee Day attendees can attend a free concert at One Fire field and hear Cherokee music in a variety of genres, including pop, R&B, hip-hop, folk/American, country, reggae and metal.
“It’s a little thing for everyone,” Charles said. “This album covers all genres of interest, which is important because we want to make sure people are inspired by what they can. I don’t think there’s a lot of people performing in the Cherokee other than traditional hymns and ritual songs.”
Heavy metal singer Colby Luper has a song on his album called “Uktena” that is based on a traditional Cherokee story.
“I just took some stories about uktena from the Cherokee heritage, and I just wrote songs about those stories,” says Looper. “The process of translating my songs is probably easier than some others because my songs already have a Cherokee theme.”
Looper said he pursued music outside of work, and Charles approached him to write a song for the album.
“Knowing that I’m a Cherokee and a musician who writes original music, whenever Jeremy started the project for “Anvdvnelisgi” he would contact me and ask if you were interested in it. So, he then put me with a speaker/ The translators worked together, and we just had to translate one of my songs into a Cherokee,” said Luper.
Two artists on the album who wrote original songs in Cherokee without translation include Agalisiga Mackey and Zebadiah Nofire. McKee said country singer Jimmy Rogers inspired him to write the song “Gatlohiha.”
“I think it’s easier to write songs in Cherokee than to write them in English and type them into Cherokee,” Mackey said. “But I really respect people who have to import their songs from English into the Cherokee. That’s hard stuff. It’s a hard thing to do.”
McKee said his goal is to inspire people to speak or write their own music in their native language.
“My goal is to bring language to people, and hopefully inspire people of any age to start talking, and if they’re not Cherokee, to even write songs in that language or their own native language,” McKee said.
Limited CDs and T-shirts designed for Cherokee National Day were sold during the concert.Pre-orders for the limited-edition vinyl record are now on hortonrecords.org. “Anvdvnelisgi” will be released worldwide on CD and all digital platforms on October 21st.
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