Musician Kelly Jackson lives in Madison right now, but she's originally from Lac du Flambeau.
As part of WXPR's We Live Up Here series, Beth Tornes talked to Jackson about her musical influences and how she uses music as medicine.
For Lac du Flambeau musician Kelly Jackson, music is medicine, and has the power to heal. Music has always been part of her life, ever since she was a child and grew up listening to country music.
“My father and my uncles all played guitar and sang, so I think my earliest memories of being a part of music include all night music sessions with my uncles and dad singing Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline. So they always would grab me and put me up on the table and say, OK, sing Patsy Cline. I remember not really enjoying it after a while, and then after some of my family passed, I kind of missed it.”
Jackson wrote her first song at age 11 and performed it at her grade school. As a young woman, she wrote hundreds of songs in a notebook as a way of getting her thoughts and feelings out on the page.
In 2010, she started grouping songs together into an album, which she first imagined would be a few songs played on acoustic guitar. She later added electric guitar, native flute and other elements, and the album turned out to be much more. In fact, Jackson’s debut album, Spirit of a Woman, won her a 2017 Native American Music Award for Best Album. She says it honored the women in her life who helped her to get through a difficult time, when he had gotten divorced and became a single parent. She realized at the time that much of her healing and her success came from the women in her life.
“I wanted my album to be some sort of message of empowerment, honoring women in general. You know women have to balance the challenge of taking care of their families, and oftentimes now in today’s society, you have to balance a career and make a living. And also to be stewards in their own community and be part of that process as well. And it can be really heavy, and I think I just wanted to show tribute through the music.”
Many songs on Spirit of a Woman encourage women to be strong, and to follow their dreams.
Jackson’s musical roots go deep. As a member of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, her music is deeply informed by tribal culture.
“I think music for me as an indigenous woman, I have not known a time of my life when music wasn’t a part of our spiritual being, right? So whether you’re at ceremonies where you’re listening to shaker and vocals, or you’re at a pow wow and you’re listening to that heartbeat of a drum.”
She says everything in her music has been deeply influenced by her Native roots.
“Whether that be the feeling of a heartbeat, or a Native flute, or a story of the boarding school. So it’s everything from the actual construction of the melody and the musical instrumentation that I use all the way up to the lyrical storytelling. So I really like that in the first album a lot of my songs are stories that sort of unravel as you listen to them more and more.”
Jackson’s second album, Renditions of the Soul, is a little more “edgy.” In these songs, she explores more complex experiences, emotions, and ways of healing, including from sexual violence.
In her song, “Don’t Speak,” she talks about how sexual violence was a taboo subject. She wants to overcome that taboo, to help others to heal.
“I really wanted to use music as a way that would inspire someone to realize that in fact, they are in fact not alone, and that it’s OK to talk about it. And I think what was scary at first was having to put that vulnerability of my own story out there. People were like, oh my goodness, were you a victim of sexual violence? Undeniably I have been. And I wanted to be sure there were others that knew it was ok….and that’s an incredible dark side of healing. Sometimes when there’s something really difficult that sometimes passes on from generation to generation, we have to be not afraid to deal with it. Music without a doubt has been part of that process.”
Kelly Jackson’s currently working on a third album, which will feature collaborations with other artists.
“I really want it to be more collaborative. So I’m working right now with Wade Fernandez, who is another indigenous artist. We have very similar ways of telling stories through music and he’s had a really great pathway of sharing his culture and his thoughts through music.”
Jackson’s also released a single called “Wake Up,” inspired by a visit to Standing Rock with her son Roland, and Danielle and Theo Yancey, both musicians. She and Theo collaborated on a song about how we need to take better care of Mother Earth. Last year, “Wake Up” was nominated for a Native American Music Award for Best Music Video.
(See the music video here)
The trajectory of Kelly Jackson’s musical career suggests that music can heal our hearts, and as we heal ourselves, so we can heal the world.
Beth Tornes is a poet and freelance writer living in Lac du Flambeau. This story was written by Beth Tornes and produced for radio by Mackenzie Martin.
This story was funded in part by a grant from the Wisconsin Humanities Council, with funds from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the State of Wisconsin. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this project do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Wisconsin Humanities Council supports and creates programs that use history, culture, and discussion to strengthen community life for everyone in Wisconsin.
