Agalisiga - Nasgino Inage Nidayulenvi (It Started in the Woods) (2024) Hi-Res

Country music runs deep in Native American communities, from a deep-seated love of Hank Williams to the influence of Native greats on the genre, like Robbie Robertson and Link Wray. For Oklahoma Cherokee singer and songwriter Agalisaga “Chuj” Mackey, even though country’s just one genre that inspired him early on, it’s become a natural way for him to write new music in the endangered Cherokee language. His new album, Nasgino Inagei Nidayulenvi (It Started in the Woods), coming October 18, 2024, on Oklahoma record label Horton Records, is sung entirely in Cherokee, with original songs that speak of love, death, a reverence for the natural world, and two covers, one from Williams and the other from Bob Dylan. With only 1,500 first language speakers left, the Cherokee language suffered greatly from the aggression of American residential schools, which taught an entire generation that Cherokee language and culture had no worth. It’s been a hard battle coming back from that kind of oppression, but language and culture activists like Chuj are pushing for a world in which Cherokee is sung, spoken, and present in their everyday lives. This language has been alive for thousands of years at this point and has much to say in modern life. For Chuj, the songs on his new album were actually easier to write in Cherokee than in English. Since Cherokee is a tonal language, it lends itself well to songwriting, “you sing your words,” he says. Plus, as Chuj points out, Cherokee is a remarkably adaptive language, letting songwriters write out an entire sentence in English as one long rhyming word in Cherokee. With a rock-solid country backing on the new album, the beauty of the almost lost Cherokee language shines through in Chuj’s humble singing. His voice is weathered in Cherokee, a soft burr behind his words reminiscent of a midwest accent, but in another tongue. And though he had two grandparents who spoke fluent Cherokee and a father who was an activist for the culture, Chuj has still had to work hard to build up his language skills. He currently teaches Cherokee language and culture to kids in his hometown in Oklahoma, and his goal with the album is to inspire other Cherokee language speakers to use this ancient and beautiful living language in their everyday lives.