Reservation Blues - Mato Nanji Info

The Indigenous Jam in Omaha has become an annual blues feast in the Midwest bringing together artists such as Indigenous, The Davey Brothers, Chris Duarte, Double Trouble, Charlie Burton, and many others. At the 2001 Jam, NETV was there to cover the event as well as sit down and talk to some of the performers such as Indigenous' own Mato Nanji. The soft spoken Nanji recounted some of the bands early influences and talks about the importance of the family dynamics which make Indigenous the powerful force in music that it has become.

[Mato Nanji] "My dad was a big influence on us. I think a lot of the stuff -- writing now and different ideas a lot of that came from his ideas I think. Because he had a lot of different ideas, more than just straight blues or traditional blues. I mean...it's always good to bring in different influences and that's why...I think he is a really big part in what we're doing and the way we write now.

"[When] I got started playing music I first wanted to play drums. But we never had the drums. My mom and dad never had drums and so my dad had like guitars and amps and stuff in the basement and that's kind of where I started, you know, to try to play the guitar.

"And [dad] just started teaching me the basic stuff. You know, how to tune it and how to play certain chords -- taught me a lot of chords and from there he said, 'It's up to you to listen to all these great guitar players.' like Freddy Keene and Freddy Guy and Albert King and he's actually the one that brought Stevie Ray Vaughn home -- this guy was the one of the best guitarists I ever heard. So it's kind of how I got started.

"And then probably, like when I was about 14 or 15 I think, is when we started the band and my parents are the ones that actually thought of the idea of us becoming a band. And they already had the instruments picked out for my sister. They wanted her to play drums [so] my brother played bass.

"Back then we had a sister that played keyboards but she quit after we started touring and stuff. She ended up having a family. So we just ended up doing without. Back in the beginning my mom and dad would come out and actually play with us, like my mom would sing and my dad would play guitar and sing. And they would do most of the vocals. None of us recall singing back then. But they said somebody has to start singing so I sang. Nobody else in the band wanted to step forward so I said, 'Well, I guess I'll try it.' So from there I started singing and after that my parents just said, 'Well, take to the roads and just keep going.'

"Well now, I've pretty much been writing everything for the group. My brother and my sister have been writing a lot of stuff [too] so we're kind of bringing in different kinds of stuff and different kind of sounds. And so it's kind of a mixture of all kinds of music right now that we're doing. That's actually a mixture of all the influences like Santana and Buddy Guy. Santana to Buddy Guy, you know, it's like blues rock -- rockish kind of stuff. So, for me it's kind of like, you know, paying tribute back to [who] I learned from. Just like giving music back to all the people that actually gave me the chance to hear the music. So that's how I feel about it."