- Folk music has a long and rich tradition in the United States, telling stories that capture life in lyric and melody.

Today's guest uses those tools to tell stories that reflect her indigenous heritage.

She's Mariee Sioux, this week on Story in the Public Square.

(uplifting music) - Hello, and welcome to the Story in the Public Square, where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes, from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

Joining me from his home in Rhode Island is my friend and cohost, G. Wayne Miller, of the Providence Journal.

Each week, we talk about big issues with great guests, authors, journalists, songwriters and more, to make sense of the stories that shape public life in the United States today.

This week we're joined by Mariee Sioux, a singer and songwriter, joining us today from her home in California.

Mariee, thank you so much for being with us.

- [Mariee] Hi, thank you so much for having me.

- Well, you know, so Wayne played your music for me and said, "I think we should have you on."

And I listened to just a little bit, and I said, "Oh my goodness, we really should."

Would you describe yourself as an artist?

How do you present yourself?

- I like to kind of actually think of myself more as a storyteller than just a folk singer.

Sometimes people put me in that category, but I really do feel like I'm a writer first and foremost.

I've always written poetry and used a lot of words since I was about like nine years old.

So kind of an abstract storyteller, for the natural world, is a way that I sometimes put it.

- [Jim] Did you, when did you, when did you fall in love with music?

- Oh my gosh, I've always loved music since I was a kid, probably around like, my dad always played music, bluegrass, growing up, so we were always, always around music, our family.

And I think my first favorite band, and like memory of loving music, was Simon and Garfunkel when I was about like seven or eight.

And I used to make mix tapes for myself to drive to school to, so that I could like listen to Simon and Garfunkel all the time, like in the car.

(laughing) I think it's been kind of a life, a lifelong thing from the beginning.

- And so you grew up in Northern California, is that correct?

Tell us about that, and your parents both have very interesting backgrounds.

And so let's hear about that, 'cause clearly that that upbringing and your parents and your family have had an influence on your music and your poetry.

We should note that you're also a poet.

I mean, you do a lot of things, but anyway, tell us about your childhood and upbringing.

- Well, I grew up with my mom on an organic farm up in the Sierra foothills, which is Nisenan land, the local tribe here.

And, yeah, I grew up really close to the land, really fortunate though we lived in a really small cabin and sometimes didn't have a lot of money, we were really rich in food and just being close to nature, and I had just a really, really deep connection with nature and plants.

And since I was a kid, you know, I've always like kind of talked to plants, and that's always been something that I've done.

I've always like been really drawn to the natural world and able to be immersed in it through that upbringing.

And also my dad being a, being a musician and being a bluegrass player, he always had people over playing music and jamming, jamming with each other.

And my mom was always in the garden, and really growing a lot of flowers, and it was a very, very beautiful upbringing for sure.

- How did your dad get into bluegrass?

Was that something from his family, or did he discover it on his own or?

- I think he discovered it when he was in college.

I'm pretty sure.

I've never actually asked him where it first started, but I think since he was like, since he went to college, up in College of the Redwoods.

- And he played on some of your early work, did he not?

I think I read that.

- Yeah, he's played mandolin on a cup, and the pedal steel on a couple of songs on a couple of records of mine, and we've played some shows together and yeah.

- So I know if I, if I understand correctly, your mom is of, is an indigenous person.

Her family has been in this land forever literally.

How does that heritage influence you as a storyteller and as a musician?

- Hmm, that's a good question.

It's kind of like a bit of a complicated one, but yeah, my mom is mixed, mixed race.

She's she's indigenous Californian, and also different indigenous tribes in Mexico, and a little Spanish, and she's not affiliated with any tribes so specifically.

And so I think some of the loss and the grief of a lot of our heritage being lost so rapidly over a couple of generations has been something that's been really impactful to my path and really finding actually songwriting and singing has been something that's, I've always kind of felt, felt this loss of culture and loss of, you know, language and customs that I know was intact not that long ago has been like a really, really big grief for me in my life, and I've always felt really close to that, even though it's kind of gone, I feel like really close in my spirit to that world.

So that's been something that I've been trying to like piece back together in myself, and I think that happens through making music a lot of the time for me, finding music and singing has been a way kind of back to my ancestry, and back to putting the pieces together that sometimes feel lost.

- So in a little bit, we're going to hear a selection from one of your songs that reflects what you're talking about here.

Exactly.

But that'll be in a couple of minutes.

You share a birthday with Rosa Parks, and I have to read this, because this was a recent Instagram post and maybe you can elaborate on it, but I found this very moving and insightful in terms of your development, you know, as somebody who has a keen sense of social justice.

Let me read what, what you posted on Instagram.

Happy birthday, radical woman, who with an act of soft and fierce power ignited an historical movement.

I'll never forget when I first heard about her around age nine, I could not understand.

And you wrote that in all caps.

I could not understand how she wasn't allowed to stay seated if white people needed a seat and thus was arrested when she would not give hers up.

May we continue to know and utilize the powers within us to stand up against injustice in these accelerated and bewildering times during this great shifting wave for humanity.

That's powerfully put, I mean, very, very finally put.

Talk about Rosa Parks and the influence on you, your childhood, and now your adulthood.

- Yeah, I do really clearly remember hearing about her story, and I didn't at the time, didn't know that I shared a birthday with her, but I think as a child growing up in a really accepting family, I just couldn't, I couldn't wrap my mind around that story.

Like it literally just didn't, just didn't make sense to me, you know, like I couldn't understand it.

And I think I just remember like asking my parents like why, like how, how could that be?

And them trying to explain it to me, and that, you know, like Black people didn't have the same rights as white people.

And this was part of our history and something that we needed to understand and also probably led into a lot of, you know, things they taught me about indigenous people, and people being here before us, and just different talks like that.

But I do just really remember that vividly.

I don't really remember much more than that, but that it really was impactful to me, and kind of another, a reminder that racism really is a learned experience, a learned thing, a learned experience, a learned viewpoint, you know?

- So talk about some of your early music influences.

Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan were two of them.

Two of our favorite singers and songwriters and musicians, two I wrote down.

- Yeah, kind of classic, but they really, they really were.

Also Jimi Hendrix was in there too.

They were probably like my top three most influential people as a young person.

And I remember I had a record player when I was like about 14 and like in high school, and I couldn't believe Bob Dylan's music when I first heard it.

Like, I know a lot of people probably experienced that, and experienced that when he was coming onto the scene of music, but I was a teenager, you know, in 2000, having that same experience hearing Bob Dylan.

Not for the first time probably, but like really hearing it as someone in their adolescence, and I couldn't believe this person had written these songs.

I was so mesmerized by the lyrics.

And I would sit in my bedroom and like write down the lyrics as he's sang, so that I could like read them, and like have them written around my room and stuff.

And Joni Mitchell too, yeah.

Just such moving, such moving music.

I would just cry.

I was a really emotional like young person.

Joni Mitchell, really.

I felt like I understood what she was singing about, even though I had never been through those experiences yet.

But now that music obviously is even more touching on levels after like, I'm 36 now and have been through a lot of different life experiences, so it's amazing.

- Can you remember the first Dylan song that you just sort of unpacked the lyrics too?

- Yes, It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding).

- Yeah, and what about it sort of spoke to you?

- I loved that I didn't know what he was talking about, but I felt like I understood everything that was being said.

(laughing) - Wow, look, that totally makes sense to me.

The most powerful music I have found, speaking obviously for myself, is when you're moved emotionally.

Even if you don't necessarily hear even every word and every lyric.

You just, you feel it.

And that frankly was one of the appeals of your music too, when I first started listening on Spotify.

It was like, wow.

And I've listened to a whole lot more since then, and enjoyed every song.

And so do you remember the first song you wrote on your own?

What it was about, or what instrument it was played on?

Or give us, if you have a recollection of that, give us that story.

- I do remember kind of the first song I wrote.

I definitely wrote it on guitar.

I taught myself guitar when I was about 18 or 19 after high school.

And I think I wrote the song called Boombox Sounds, and it was kind of a little song about our town and this certain sidewalk that we used to all hang out on, and one of our close friends had passed away in a car accident, and I somehow kind of put, put that reference in there, and I don't exactly remember all the words, but I do remember that being kind of the first song that I wrote.

- It sounds like you were always a storyteller.

You know, are there moments in life, you mentioned the loss of this front as a teenager.

Are there moments of life that are just more impactful from a storytelling perspective?

- Yeah, I mean, I think for me I don't know how it is for others.

For me, songwriting is really a lot of, let's see, putting things back together.

Like, it's always like when I feel like I've lost something or I'm searching for something or I'm broken hearted over something, it really helps me to heal.

You know, it's really part of my therapy as a human, and it's something that offers me a lot of healing in my life experience.

And so, yeah, it can be from a lot of experiences like that.

They're not always necessarily tragic, but times when I'm feeling lost or broken, it helps me find like the way back to myself.

- So I read that you went to Patagonia, which is where you've taught yourself to play guitar.

And by the way, Jim is so impressed that you've taught yourself to play guitar, 'cause he's still- - Four chords still.

I've been at it for 20 years.

I'm about four chords, so, but yeah, go on.

- So what did you do in Patagonia and how old were you, and tell us about, you know, learning to play the guitar there.

- That was a really important trip for me, actually.

I went to Patagonia in Argentina to work for this school.

I don't remember the name of it anymore, but it was a school that helped the indigenous, the indigenous children of that area, the Mapuche, and they taught them a lot of different things besides just the regular, you know, schooling.

Regular schooling like raising alpacas, farming, building greenhouses, taking care of animals.

And so I went there after high school, so I was about just over 18, and I brought my guitar.

I had just been teaching myself a couple of Bob Dylan songs, and learning some chords.

And I was supposed to be going there with another girl my age, and so I didn't know that I was going to be going there alone, which ended up being what happened.

Once I got all the way down to like the southern tip of Argentina, they told me like, "Oh, that girl's not coming."

Actually, she was from San Francisco, and they were like, "You know, the other American girl, she's not coming, "so it's just going to be you here by yourself."

And I was like kind of shocked and freaked out, 'cause that kind of wasn't the plan, but so anyway, it was a really important trip.

So it was really challenging and really beautiful.

And it's a really beautiful and an intense landscape there, in the high desert, and working with the children was like, incredible, though there were like language barriers and some rough patches to work through.

By the end, it was this incredible growthful experience.

And while I was there, I was very homesick, and I was very alone sometimes, because I was doing a lot of projects by myself, like painting buildings, like in the wind, and like blowing wind all day by myself, and just a lot of really solitary times.

So I spent a lot of the time writing in my head and then at night turning some of these writings into songs.

So when I came back from the trip that was about four or five months long, I had like 10 songs I'd written.

- So your first album, if I have this correct, was in 2006 and it was called A Bundled Bundle of Bundles, of the title.

Tell us about that album.

Was that in fact your first one?

- There was a one before that that was called Pray Me a Shadow.

It was a little home recording that my friend kind of kindly forced me to make, because he really wanted to listen to my songs as he like went to sleep at his house, so he kind of was the first person that instigated me like recording this music.

I never would thought of doing that.

I never imagined being a singer or performer or songwriter really, but so that was the first one, Pray Me a Shadow.

Bundled Bundle of Bundles was my second little home recording that he also helped me do, and that was definitely a little more, I had kind of gotten into some deeper song writing at that point.

I had written a song on there that's Bundles that was about 10 minutes long, and I really, really started crafting more my songs and realizing that this was something that I could do, that I kind of had a knack for, putting words together and singing.

- Did that surprise you, discovering that you had this talent?

I mean, this obviously wasn't your life plan when you were younger.

Was it like- - It's Go ahead.

- Really surprising, actually.

(laughing) I think most people that knew me were really surprised.

I was really shy growing up, and unless I was close friends with you, I'm a total like goofball, you know, crazy person.

But like I was pretty shy.

I never would have wanted to be in front, in front of people.

I mean, speaking or performing, that was like terrifying, so I had to really get over, I think for the first like probably five years of performing, and even sometimes still over 15 years into this, I was terrified of getting on stage.

Like it was almost like I was sick to my stomach like when I had to sing songs.

So it's been something that I get over.

(laughing) - Well, I was going to say, I think that this would be a great spot to maybe actually take a listen, to just a little bit of one of your songs.

It's called Black Snakes.

We'll take a listen, and maybe we'll ask you to tell us a little bit about it.

So this is Black Snake by Mariee Sioux.

♪ Our skin tied over the drum ♪ ♪ An elder's eyes into the woods did run ♪ ♪ Children tied into the drum ♪ ♪ A newborn's tears with the river did run ♪ ♪ Eagle crying over the drum ♪ ♪ An ancient seed smiles into the light of the sun ♪ ♪ While Medusa's head of black snakes ♪ ♪ Tears through the loss and what remains ♪ ♪ Praying as dogs snap between labor pains ♪ - So Mariee, explain to us what is Black Snakes about?

- I wrote Black Snakes after I hadn't written a song in a really long time, almost a year, and what happens sometimes, you know, I definitely would say I was having like a writer's block or something, and I was kind of at a place where I was like, "Am I ever going to write a song again?

"I don't know if that's going to happen."

And I was on, I was preparing for a trip to go out to Standing Rock when that was happening right before Thanksgiving.

And I sat down.

I kind of sat down at my alter, and like had a little moment, had my guitar out, and then I, this was one of those kind of spooky experiences that's only happened a couple of times in my life, where I kind of saying, oh, it gives me chills thinking about it.

I sing this song into being kind of in real time.

Like there wasn't much writing it beforehand.

I started playing the part on the guitar, and I started singing the words and the melody and barely revised it or anything by the end, so it's like the song really wanted to come through.

And I feel like the song really is a prayer for water and is a prayer for the strength and remembrance of indigenous people really this time.

- That sounds like a mystical experience, for lack of a better word.

Was it?

I mean.

- I would call it something like that, yeah.

- Have you ever had that feeling before or one that brought a song out of you or channeled a song into you and then out into the world?

I don't know how.

Go ahead.

- There's been moments of like writing that have felt like that where I'm just like, I don't even remember writing the words.

It's kind of a trance-y like experience, and you know, it just kind of happens out of nowhere.

There's not, I wouldn't say there's like anything I do to bring that on.

It just happens sometimes, but no, this was really particular with the singing of the melody and the words.

And it's like this song already had been written before.

Like, you know, it doesn't even feel my, feel like my my song or something.

None of my songs really feel like my songs.

I feel like they're always coming from another place.

You know, they're just coming through, and they kind of want, they want to come out and be heard now.

That's kind of the feeling it feels like.

- I'm curious sort of how you work, you know, am I imagining you with a pad of paper and a pen and sort of jotted down ideas?

Am I imagined you with a recording device and your guitar and just sort of, you know, sort of almost free forming stuff.

Is it some combination?

How, as a songwriter, how do you work your craft?

- It's always different.

I mean, there's some times I'm just writing songs in the car, 'cause I'm just little melodies and I'm always like singing little, little things.

I think it kind of starts with that.

It's kind of, it's always around me, 'cause I feel like music is in this ethereal kind of, kind of in a spiritual realm where it's floating around, and if you can be open to little pieces coming down, you can have little pieces come from here and there, and then when you sit down with the guitar.

So when I go and sit down in my room, I'm like, "I'm gonna like work on something."

There's already been little things floating, floating around, and they can have a chance to kind of make their way through and maybe get pieced together into something.

And then sometimes I'm just writing, and there's no music part of it involved.

- You mentioned sitting down in front of your altar.

What is your altar?

- I always have an altar in my room.

At least I have for many years.

It's just a place where I put things there that are sacred to me, you know?

It involves different stuff at different times.

Right now it has water and corn on it.

(chuckling) - And those are important, obviously, not just to your music, but to you personally?

- Yeah, it's definitely important for me to have a space where I can just sit in front of and whether I need to like meditate or just be, yeah, that's my own sacred space really.

- So speaking of space, you've been living through a pandemic, as we all have, and you've been doing it in a beautiful part of the world, Northern California, but how has that been in terms of your creativity, and also in terms of your spirituality?

How has that affected both of those, and you as an individual?

- [Jim] And we've got about a minute left.

- Wow, so yeah, it's been such a big time.

I don't know.

I mean, being on my parents' land, kind of coming back to my home base, was a real reminder of how blessed I am, because I know that wasn't a lot, a lot, like many people's experience.

And I think just being grateful, and being really humbled at what happened, I think a lot of us were deeply humbled at the experience we just all went through and continue to go through.

- And you'll be moving soon to Brooklyn, New York, which is going to be a whole continent away, in a very different environment than.

- Yeah, I'm going to go check it out.

I really want to, I kinda need a little break from the woods.

I want to go be around more musicians and artists for a little while, and I have some friends out there I want to maybe work on some, some music stuff with, and I have some new recordings I'm working on, some songs I wrote during the pandemic and stuff.

So I just am excited to go see what it's like out there.

I don't know how long it'll be out there, or what exactly will happen, but I'm just ready for an adventure I think.

- Well, Mariee, you know, congratulations on all of your success, and thank you for spending some of your time with us and sharing your story with us.

That is all the time we have this week, but if you want to know more about Story in the Public Square, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter, or visit pellcenter.org, where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For G. Wayne Miller, I'm Jim Ludes asking you to join us again next time for more Story in the Public Square.

(uplifting music)