Uploaded August 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
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 interconnectedness of life, 'Old Indian Hymn' functions as the spiritual core of 'symbiont.'"
Jake Blount: synthesizers, percussion, vocals
Mali Obomsawin: percussion, vocals
Windborne: vocals
Artemisia absinthium also controls the synthesizers
Lyrics:
Glory to her the mother be
Glory to moon and sun
Glory to birds up on the wing,
To wild things where they run
Down from above the ancient ones
Have come into my breath
To speak of their eternal love
To warn us of the test
Hallelujah hosanna
Unto the ancients we shall cry
With confidence of soul
In hopes that may yet survive
When the final bell has tolled
Hallelujah hosanna
There is a stream that issues forth
From soil and from bone
A living stream both dark and deep
And strong as ancient stone
Stream/purchase:
Smithsonian Folkways: https://folkways.si.edu/jake-blount-and-mali-obomsawin/symbiont
All other platforms: orcd.co/jake-blount-and-mali-obomsawin
From the first notes of symbiont, the radical new collaborative album and document of Black and Indigenous futurism from Jake Blount and Mali Obomsawin, the listener is met with rising tidewaters, massive droughts, and the appearance of an iconoclastic uprising amidst the world’s indifference. Questions of future or present tense swirl around the music as the duo unspools the intertwined threads of racial and climate justice. Amid rumbling synthesizer drones, the thrum of banjo, and the thwack of drum machines, a whisper of truth can be heard: this crisis has been unfolding for centuries.
Jake Blount:
Website: jakeblount.com
Facebook: facebook.com/notjacobnotblunt
Twitter: twitter.com/forked_queer
Instagram: instagram.com/jake.m.blount
TikTok: tiktok.com/@jake.m.blount?lang=en
Mali Obomsawin:
Website: maliobomsawin.com
Facebook: facebook.com/maliobomsawin
Twitter: https://x.com/featherbitchxx
Instagram: instagram.com/maliobomsawin
Smithsonian Folkways: https://folkways.si.edu
Facebook: facebook.com/smithsonianfolkwaysrecordings
Twitter: twitter.com/Folkways
Instagram: instagram.com/smithsonianfolkways
Support our work! Become a Friend of Folkways: https://folkways.si.edu/friends-of-folkways
The content and comments posted here are subject to the Smithsonian Institution copyright and privacy policy (www.si.edu/copyright). Smithsonian reserves the right in its sole discretion to remove any content at any time.
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 interconnectedness of life, 'Old Indian Hymn' functions as the spiritual core of 'symbiont.'"
Jake Blount: synthesizers, percussion, vocals
Mali Obomsawin: percussion, vocals
Windborne: vocals
Artemisia absinthium also controls the synthesizers
Lyrics:
Glory to her the mother be
Glory to moon and sun
Glory to birds up on the wing,
To wild things where they run
Down from above the ancient ones
Have come into my breath
To speak of their eternal love
To warn us of the test
Hallelujah hosanna
Unto the ancients we shall cry
With confidence of soul
In hopes that may yet survive
When the final bell has tolled
Hallelujah hosanna
There is a stream that issues forth
From soil and from bone
A living stream both dark and deep
And strong as ancient stone
Stream/purchase:
Smithsonian Folkways: https://folkways.si.edu/jake-blount-and-mali-obomsawin/symbiont
All other platforms: orcd.co/jake-blount-and-mali-obomsawin
From the first notes of symbiont, the radical new collaborative album and document of Black and Indigenous futurism from Jake Blount and Mali Obomsawin, the listener is met with rising tidewaters, massive droughts, and the appearance of an iconoclastic uprising amidst the world’s indifference. Questions of future or present tense swirl around the music as the duo unspools the intertwined threads of racial and climate justice. Amid rumbling synthesizer drones, the thrum of banjo, and the thwack of drum machines, a whisper of truth can be heard: this crisis has been unfolding for centuries.
Jake Blount:
Website: jakeblount.com
Facebook: facebook.com/notjacobnotblunt
Twitter: twitter.com/forked_queer
Instagram: instagram.com/jake.m.blount
TikTok: tiktok.com/@jake.m.blount?lang=en
Mali Obomsawin:
Website: maliobomsawin.com
Facebook: facebook.com/maliobomsawin
Twitter: https://x.com/featherbitchxx
Instagram: instagram.com/maliobomsawin
Smithsonian Folkways: https://folkways.si.edu
Facebook: facebook.com/smithsonianfolkwaysrecordings
Twitter: twitter.com/Folkways
Instagram: instagram.com/smithsonianfolkways
Support our work! Become a Friend of Folkways: https://folkways.si.edu/friends-of-folkways
The content and comments posted here are subject to the Smithsonian Institution copyright and privacy policy (www.si.edu/copyright). Smithsonian reserves the right in its sole discretion to remove any content at any time.
