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Listen to Jake Blount & Mali Obomsawin's textural and moody “Old Indian Hymn,“ from their album 'symbiont.' About the song, the artists write: “We learned 'Old Indian Hymn' from a shape note hymnal titled 'Indian Melodies by Thomas Commuck' (Narragansett, Brothertown)—what some have called the first published music by an Indigenous composer. In the text, Commuck explains that the Narragansett Tribe and others along the Atlantic coast 'heard [the song] in the air… many years before the arrival of the whites in America.' Long afterward, representatives of those tribes heard the inhabitants of the nascent Plymouth Colony singing the same tune during a church service. Our version of the song incorporates complex, interlocking percussion parts played on many different instruments, and textural components that blend processed vocal performances by Windborne with synthesizers controlled by a wormwood plant. A testament to the beauty, diversity and
