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Artist
Joe Rainey
12+ albums
experimentalelectronicpowwowvocalPost-Industrial
about
An indigenous singer who blends centuries-old musical traditions with contemporary electronic production, Joe Rainey is taking powwow music to places it's never been before. A member of the Red Lake Ojibwe people, Rainey made field recordings of respected powwow drummers for years before he began singing in the traditional style, and after making fans of several noted indie and electronic artists, he began collaborating to create a sound that honored the music's past while introducing it to a new audience, adding loops, beats, and ambient sounds that complement the mood of the music even as they add unfamiliar elements. After making a name for himself among native listeners with his work in the groups Midnite Express and Iron Boy, he took his powwow music in a bold new direction on his debut album, 2022's Niineta. Rainey was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1985. His family was of the Red Lake Ojibwe people, and he grew up in one of America's largest urban Native American communities. (The pioneering activist group the American Indian Movement was founded in Minneapolis in 1968.) By the time Rainey was five, his parents enrolled him in a singing and dancing group for indigenous children and he started taking a portable cassette recorder to powwows, capturing the sounds of the drummers and vocalists. In his teens, he helped found a drumming group, the Boyz Juniors, which was a youthful offshoot of a well-known Minneapolis indigenous outfit, the Boyz. In time, Rainey joined a
