This is the only photo I could find of Robbie Robertson that depicts any trace of his Native American ancestry. For a musician who was half-First Nations, and proud of it, that strikes me as odd.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons, Nicholas Jennings.
She broke down / on the highway / miles from nowhere / it had no number. / She was lost / a long way from home.
Robbie Robertson, musician and activist, died Friday, August 11. Maybe to some of you, he’s best remembered as the leader of the The Band, the nameless but very talented group that fronted for Bob Dylan on his last couple of tours. If that’s all, okay. You remember hits like “Up On Cripple Creek,” “The Weight,” and their cover of Joan Baez’ odd tearjerker for the Lost Cause, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” Their performance on Dylan’s last tour even inspired Taxi Driver director Martin Scorsese to shoot a documentary, The Last Waltz, which was, coincidentally, the name of the tour. So Robbie was kind of a famous rocker, for a while.
She was fed-up / with the routine / when you got trouble / with a man. / She blew town / with a vengeance!
But I bet you’ve never heard Robbie’s “lost album,” by far his most complex, subtle and sophisticated work, and one which deserves much wider recognition and play than it has historically received. I am referring to his masterpiece with the Red Road Ensemble, Music for ‘The Native Americans.’
Painted Desert, peyote rain / Lord don’t let me go insane! / Skinwalker, skinwalker / Who am I? Who are you? / I was only passing through / Skinwalker, skinwalker!
I worked on the Navajo Nation for almost 8 years as a reporter, winning some awards. I lost most of them in Hurricane Charley, 2004 for those who don’t/can’t remember, and only a very durable plaque, awarded by the Associated Press in 1995 for “Best of Show, Investigative Reporting,” remains. Fortunately, the vivid memories I have of driving through miles of emptiness near towns like Crown Point, Mexican Hat and Shiprock, a full moon rising huge and gibbous in the rear-view mirror, have proven more durable. All I had for accompaniment was Robbie’s beautiful, soulful, inspiring and sometimes eerie music. And that was all I needed!
A strange encounter / to be sure / He was wicked / He was pure / Hear him calling? / He’s calling for you!
Robertson was Canadian, which makes him officially “First Nations,” the name the aboriginal people use in our northern neighbor, rather than “Native Americans,” which is what you call an American Indian if you don’t know their tribe! They much prefer to identify themselves as Navajo, or Cherokee, or Sioux, thinking that somehow White Culture will notice those unsubtle distinctions as much as they do. For instance, you can officially join the Cherokee Nation (which has its own unique alphabet, invented by a Cherokee) if you are only 1/128 Cherokee blood — which means if one great-great-great-great-great grandparent was Cherokee! The blood quotient for the Navajo Nation is far stricter: 50% Navajo, meaning one of your parents is Navajo, and the other better learn to speak at least a little Navajo, or they’re in danger of being thought of forever as a bi’laga’anah — a white person, an outsider.
Come with me / into the mystic / Come with me / into the night / We could live / Live forever!
Robertson’s mother, who was Cayuga and Mohawk, had him out of wedlock with a Jewish gambler. Like my mother, she fell for a Jew; only Mom, a tough RAF nurse who was enduring the Blitz in London, placed her bet on a dashing young Jewish lieutenant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps. (Us Jews really get around! It’s a dirty job, subverting the Aryan gene pool, but somebody’s got to do it! Just look at the mess they made of the 20th Century!) Robertson was raised in a Victorian neighborhood in suburban Toronto, and assisted for a short while in a freak show! This later lead to him producing and co-starring in the 1980 feature film Carny, alongside a young Gary Busey and Jodie Foster! So once again, Robbie was famous, sort of. I mean, those co-stars are bankable! (I confess I was nowhere near the film when it was playing, but Music for ‘The Native Americans’ wasn’t composed until 1994, which seems like 10,000,000 B.C., now.)
Painted Desert, peyote rain / Lord don’t let me go insane! / Skinwalker, skinwalker / Through your eyes / I can see / You have left your mark on me / Skinwalker, skinwalker!
I started writing this post on August 12, 2023, the day after Robbie died. Two months later, I am still trying to finish it! This is the nature of the non-fatal, but chronic illnesses I am enduring: chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), and undiagnosed vertigo. Just for laughs, the gods threw in some Latin, Perugia nodularis, which means “itchy bumps” in English. This condition is more annoying, time-consuming and painful than anything else, as these bumps frequently result from ingrown hairs, or ingrown hairs surrounded by a sheath of solidified dead bacteria, or pulpy overgrown blood vessels, or small, odd-shaped pieces of cartilage or keratin poking their way from my inside through my epidermis, on their way to being pried out of my skin and disposed of. If I don’t take the initiative, the wound just doesn’t heal. It hangs around for months, but if I remove the infectious agent cleanly, it heals in days, and with little pain.
Painted Desert, peyote rain / Lord don’t let me go insane! / Skinwalker, skinwalker / Takes you to / a sacred place / Drinks a tear from your face / Skinwalker, skinwalker!
This problem is annoying, but the vertigo and CFS eat up time that I know must be rapidly running out at my age, time when I could be creating something useful, beautiful, or informative, and all I can do is wedge myself into a corner of the couch, watch Roku or YouTube, hope I don’t fall asleep and wish the room would stop spinning! So I am going to finish this blog post today, October 14, 2023, come Hell or high water, and publish it, even if I leave it incomplete! I tried a month ago, but my repeated SAVEs to the desktop didn’t capture the whole article, and I lost about half of what I wrote because I couldn’t pay sufficient attention to what I was doing! So, if this post ends in the middle, know that I reached my limit and was not able to type, or write, or think, any more. Yeah, type, not even write cursive, with a fountain pen, like I learned to do in Mrs. Notose’s 1st grade class! (She was Filipino, short-tempered, and whenever even SHE pronounced her name it sounded to our young, innocent ears like “Mrs. No-Toes!”) And YES, it is really a BITCH!
Later — I didn’t finish this, so here it is. Do yourself a favor and buy, or at least listen to, Robbie Robertson’s Music from “The Native Americans.” If this album doesn’t haunt you, make you smile and thrill you, you’re dead on the inside.
Malcolm J. Brenner 