Our next cut is introduced by
Peter Staley, one of the key figures in the award winning documentary
How to Survive a Plague and an active member of ACT UP and TAG. His work protesting with ACT UP and TAG helped make early AIDS related medicine more affordable and accessible.
My little engine that could ends her journey here at 47! I really did not have high hopes for Black Belt Eagle Scout, but most of y'all came through with taste! This is pure indie rock goodness of the best kind and I'm both shocked and impressed that she outranked boygenius and Anna Calvi here. Black Belt Eagle Scout is the project of Catherine Paul, a member of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. She uses the complexity of her identity to inform her songwriting
explaining: "Having this identity—radical indigenous queer feminist—keeps me going. My music and my identity come from the same foundation of being a Native woman."
Let's start with the name shall we? She explained to the Boston Globe (I discovered her when reading the paper at my parents house one random Sunday!):
Q. Where does the name “Black Belt Eagle Scout” come from?
A. My friend came up with my band name. We were playing in a band together and Black Belt Eagle Scout was one of the names we didn’t choose for our band. I asked if I could use it for my solo project. I’ve come to find meaning from it in a creative way. To be a black belt and an Eagle Scout is to be the highest ranking and to me, BBES means to be the best you can be in your creative self.
And she definitely is at the top of her creative game with "Soft Stud." The song is full of this pulsing longing from the way her voice stretches on the "need you/want you" refrain to the slow build and final explosion of the guitar solo that closes the song out. We love a lady who can play! She has referred to the song as her "queer anthem" and explained to
Pitch Perfect PR that it's “about the hardships of queer desire within an open relationship, which I think a lot of the queer community can relate to.” She expanded upon this talking with
The Fader:
Tell me about the album opener “Soft Stud.”
For a bit I was really afraid of doing chords for songs. I felt like they were too simple, like maybe if it’s too simple [the song] won’t be good. [For] “Soft Stud,” I was playing along to some Cat Power songs and I realized that Cat Power has this really pretty chord. And I was like, I’m gonna try and play that. The song is actually about this person that I was dating. I was in this open relationship and those can sometimes be hard because you’re sharing a partner with somebody. There’s jealousy involved. So a lot of the lyrics are about being a secondary partner, I guess. There is a lyric, “I know you're taken.” But "soft stud" is a term, I think, of endearment for somebody who is studly but also in this soft way. So that’s why I named it that.
We love a fellow a Cat Power fan creating queer anthems inspired by our fave! Also I love the term "Soft Stud" as she explains it, definitely gonna be using that. I have to say between this song and "Have Fun Tonight" we have an interesting exploration of open relationships in the rate. I've spent a decent amount of time reflecting and talking to friends about them and I've come to the conclusion that I'm simply not built for one, but would love to hear others opinions on the topic and how they might relate to this song!
Not only does Black Belt Eagle Scout make amazing queer music, she's out here representing queer Native women like a boss. Every interview I read with her was full of amazing and insightful reflections on the contemporary lives of Native people and how the intersection of being queer, a woman, and a native person inform her experiences. The Fader asked her if she feared being tokenized and her answer really blew me away:
No. And it’s because so many people in United States think that Native people don’t exist. So many people think that Native people are all dead. I don’t have a problem with being identified as a Native person because that’s a counter to people’s views about Native people like they’re something of the past. No, we’re here, present. So that’s why I don’t have a problem with if someone is like, “Oh, you’re sort of being tokenized.” Like, I don’t care. I’m showing up for my people. I’m here for us.
A lot of people will wear headdresses or a Native costume for Halloween as if we’re something that doesn’t exist anymore. I actually was talking to some publicists before I chose my publicist, and one of the publicists brought that up. I thought about it because at that time I didn’t have formed opinions about it. But afterwards I was like, You know, it doesn’t bother me. Yeah, I want to be the Native musician because there needs to be more Native musicians and there needs to be more visibility. So if you call me the Native musician, that’s totally chill.
She speaks so sharply to the reality of her existence being political and revolutionary. For most white people, especially liberal white people, it's comfortable to say "wow, we really treated those noble Native Americans terribly" and move on with a point of view firmly placed in the past. Black Belt Eagle Scouts exists firmly in the present and challenges this notion head on. When talking with the Boston Globe, she expands upon the contemporary challenges faced by indigenous people and how the roots of the problem lay in colonization and societies inability to own up to these action.
I feel like a lot of the ways in which native people don’t accept queer people and queer indigenous people in their lives has to do with colonization. When Europeans came to the United States to steal the land that’s here and kill everybody that’s an indigenous person, and then to force everyone to be in boarding schools and to forget their language and to learn English — that’s when all of that happened of “I have to be like a white person, I have to live in this white world. If I don’t, then I’ll die.” And I think that it takes a lot of healing, it’s going to take a while. It takes people like us to keep spreading that word so that more people understand that this happened.
I love that she did
not mince her words and called it as it is. She also so concisely named the roots of homophobia in Native cultures (and in many non-white cultures in general) and how white supremacy so often is the root for many of the prejudices and hates that exist in our society today.
Phew, okay this is a pop music forum so let me hop off my soap box and hope over to the commentary document before I get too carried away!
The Hot Rock This (so far) is the song that matches my general/non-pop specific music disposition. Song was relatable to perhaps a painful extent.
Pop3blow2 Oooh, this is a discovery. I knew nothing about this album or artist. This track is good & will investigate more.
reboot Nice background music
londonrain The vocals on this... yikes. They’re fine in the middle of the range but every time she approaches a high note or a low note I find myself cringing.
Constantino Whew, this is my SHIT, takes me right back to my deep ‘indie rock’ phase...which lasted about 7 years. Another new discovery, halleloo.
Yuuurei I absolutely LOVE this song and her sound. I've never been super into grunge but it's always the women in the genre who can pull me in and this is no exception. Will definitely be checking out the rest of her discography.
Let's close with uftint, whose commentary made me laugh out loud and want to ask so many questions:
Sorry, 2008 called. They want their sound back. This is totally the stuff I would pay a pound or eight to see ten years ago and blow some gorgeous twink off to, but this is 2018 and I have grown way too old for that shit. It does bring back memories of concerts of which we shall not go into details to ON TONIGHT.