Activist, Scholar and Musician, Mali Obomsawin Debut Album “Sweet Tooth”

Studying music at Dartmouth College, after a year at Berklee in Boston, “Dartmouth was the first College set up in our territory. Specifically, to christianize us.” They began to dig into the wealth of recordings at Dartmouth. “I turned inward, I was at Dartmouth College at the time, I engaged with the recordings they have there. They actually have a deep trove of recordings from Odanak First Nations.” Having met the members of Lula Wiles at Berklee, Obomsawin spent their collegiate years touring with the band, meanwhile developing their jazz skills and searching elegant compositions.

While the album was being written, their focus wasn’t on the exact capacity in which they were crossing, and recontextualizing genre lines. Not until it became time to market the record. Then they started to consider how the audience they had amassed in their career would receive this new work they had to offer. “I have had a career in roots music. I knew I had this folk baggage. And a following of that audience, I was kind of aware that they would not be comfortable or comforted by the sounds on this record. I also anticipated the audience kinda perceiving it as not a folk record. Which really got me thinking because This is THE folk tradition of the land that I come from. The land of my people.”

Obomsawin is also an activist, organizer, and writer. Having published articles over the years in The Boston Globe and Smithsonian Magazine concerning indigenous rights. They also helped to found the first Wabanaki land trust Bomazeen Land Trust, working to gather funds to facilitate the buying back of land in western Maine.

The record is a testament to how strong the heart of an album can beat, how the compositions can steer the ship. Odana is a clear statement of intent, and a delineation of execution. The band rolls and froths around Obomsawin as they sing this traditional ballad, an ode to Odanak, a Wabanaki reservation outside of Quebec, which was founded in 1660 by French Missionaries.

The band is always light, like a boxer. Swinging its shoulders, delivering jabs and quick dancerly

reactions. Loping and curving over itself, grounded by Obomsawin’s bass. The players that Obomsawin has assembled for this debut are tremendous. Noah Campbell lives up to the Sanders comparison admirably. Savannah Harris’ drumming is deft and heavy. Miriam Elhajli’s guitar playing adds melodic depth and intrigue. Allison Brink and Taylor Ho Bynum round out the ensemble with additional horns and reeds. Everyone is showing up on this one. Firing on all cylinders.

There is a deep link to be made to the Spiritual Jazz of the post-bop era. Alice Coltranes Journey into Sachidananda was the first touchstone that came to mind. There is a similar intensity and all-encompassing reverberance. Coltrane was a pillar of the spiritual jazz movement. Obomsawin describes improvisation as a spiritual practice. One which requires the heightening of all senses.

Sweet Tooth is an undeniable document, one can only imagine what it feels like to have pulled from yourself, and from the history of your people, something which holds fast. The history, culture, and originality of the Wabanaki people is often minimized here in New England, the general belief about our native history is that there simply weren’t any indigenous people, or they have long since vanished. New Hampshire has no state recognized tribes. There is no pathway through which indigenous people can obtain recognition here in the state. Vermont only recognized four groups in 2011 and 2012. Recent education legislation in New Hampshire, 2021s “Right to Freedom from Discrimination in Public Workplaces and Education,” has made it harder to address the historic disparities between indigenous people and settlers in the state by making language which implies a group is “Inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously” a punishable offense. The New Hampshire Commission on Native American Affairs, founded in 2010, has no budget, no employees, and no offices.

All to say that a statement like Sweet Tooth bears repeating. To hone in on just where it is we live, and on whose land we’ve been on the whole time. By contending with contemporary indigenous art we are not leaving indigeneity in the past, out of sight, and out of mind. Instead, we hear clearly the long history that we live amongst, the present it occupies, and the future it is moving into.