At 23, Frank Waln is the recipient of two Native American Music Awards (Best Producer 2010, Best Rap/Hip Hop Recording 2011), winner of the 2011 Rockwired Radio Music Award Winner for Best Group (Nake Nula Waun), winner of the 2013 Rockwired Radio Music Awards for Best Male Artist and Best Recording By An American Indian Artist/Band.
Frank Waln spent summers working with youth on the Rosebud Reservation. Here he is with the Oyate Baseball Team.
Frank Waln: Ready for anything By Christina Rose
Native Sun News Associate Editor ROSEBUD - A music video/biography film about 23-year-old Frank Waln's growing up on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation has been nominated for a Native American Music Award. “Frank Waln, Common Man” is Waln's third nomination, and in the past two years he has won for Best Producer and his group, Nake Nula Nuan, won Best Hip Hop. Whether or not the video wins, those who know him say Waln has been a winner for a long time. “I am very impressed with who he is and who he will become,” Rodney Bordeaux, former chairman of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe said in the opening of the film. Others interviewed used words like inspiring, positive, creative. The 45 minute video is a combination of interviews with Waln and flashing images of children’s drawings. The background music is performed by Nake Nula Waun, which includes Waln and his two partners, Dre and Kodi DeNoyer. Born and raised on the Rosebud Reservation, Waln was introduced to music in the third grade by his teacher at the Rosebud Elementary School, Shirley Gun Hammer. “I think he is musically inclined,” she told Waln’s mother. Her intuition proved fruitful. “Music was in my heart,” Waln said. “I always felt a connection to it.” Even today, he sees his third grade piano lessons and participation in a drum group as the foundation of his music today. “It’s hip hop and Lakota mixed with new technology. I have a need to breathe and eat and make music. This makes me whole.” Describing how music saved him from the trials so many teens face on the reservation, Waln said, “Something about music cut straight to my heart. It spoke to me in a way nothing else did.” Remembering how he and his mother would take walks in the evening, he recalled finding an upside-down, scratched-up CD on the ground. “I picked it up and brushed it off, took it home and played it. It was M&M, and it was inspirational.” M&M’s explosive rants and poetic use of language showed Waln a new way to cope with feelings. “Music enabled me to express the pain I felt inside, and it was easier to say in a song. At first, I wasn’t even playing to be heard but to get those emotions out, and I still do that today,” he said. His music “was a hidden talent” according to Mary Waln, Frank’s mother. “Nobody knew what he was doing. He would come home from school and on the weekends he would spend all of his time on the computer. A lot of people never knew about his music.” Mary added that besides a few lessons with Mary Gun Hammer and one semester of band in high school, Frank was completely self-taught. In the film, Waln credits his mother with introducing him to traditional spiritual ways which helped him deal with painful emotions he had been carrying since his parent’s violent split when he was a very young child. “I needed something else besides music, and my spirituality really got me through. I pledged to Sundance and became a pipe carrier. It’s a hard way of life but very rewarding. I tell youth that if I didn’t have my spirituality, I honestly believe I would be dead.” Waln said that the Lakota teachings also helped him with his music. “I was able to incorporate all of that. I want to show my peers it’s okay to participate in our culture. It’s okay to have one foot in the modern world and another in traditions. It’s okay to dress a certain way and be a pipe carrier.” In the film, he performs with Nake Nula Nuan. Waln said in the film, “The name is a Lakota expression that means be ready for anything, at all times. It’s a mentality you need on the reservation, with all of the alcohol and drugs, suicide, and being in one of the poorest counties in the country.” Waln stayed focused throughout his teenage years and through his music and spirituality, he was able to completely avoid doing drugs or alcohol. He graduated high school as valedictorian, at the top of his class and received a Gates scholarship to go to college. Following a lifelong dream to become a doctor, he attended Creighton University in Omaha, Neb. to study pre-med. Once there, he recognized that his love of music was his true passion and he left school. “I thought working in a hospital would be a way to help my people, but now I found another way,” he said. The year between leaving Creighton and going to Columbia College in Chicago gave Frank the chance to explore his music on a full-time basis. He joined Dre and Kodi DeNoyer to form the band and together they performed for kids throughout the reservation, spreading a positive message that they too could succeed at their dreams. At the same time, filmmaker Randy Ericksen of Rapid City, known primarily as a race car videographer, was filming a scene with Bear Butte in the background. He decided he needed some Native music for the background and one step after the next led him to Frank Waln. “I met Frank in 2011,” Eriksen said. “Between both of our schedules, we had two days that worked with our schedules and we spent that time shooting.” “We met a couple of times, and there was never really an ah-ha moment about making the film. I just saw what he was doing with the kids, and I wanted to make a video that had more depth than what I had been doing,” Ericksen said. In planning the video, they pondered visuals that would accompany the music. Ericksen said, “I thought about art, and one night, I sat up in my sleep and thought, children’s art!” The concept of using children’s drawings rang true to Waln, who had spent so much time playing for the youth across the reservation. “Doing the documentary and bringing it back to the elementary schools kids,” was exactly what he wanted to do. More than 300 students from Rosebud contributed their drawings, and everyone was used in the video. “The kids can look at it and see that they were a part of it. When it was finished we took hundreds of copies to the school district. I handed them out at free shows.” So far there has only been one formal showing of the video, which was at the University of Pennsylvania, at the All-Ivy Native Conference in Philadelphia. “It was awesome because at the conference there was a star quilt exhibit from Red Cloud, so it was a great setting,” Waln said. Waln’s music is distributed through ITunes, YouTube, and Prairie Edge in Rapid City, the Red Cloud Heritage Center, and other small venues and online. When Waln graduates from Columbia, he will earn a degree in Audio Arts and Acoustics with a specialty in Audio Design and Music Production. “I produce, record and make my own music. It is all rooted in trying to make music without a lot of resources on the reservation. I want to be able to put together my own music and to help other artists,” he said. While facing challenges is nothing new to Waln, coming to Chicago from the Rosebud Reservation brought new challenges into his life. “When I first moved into downtown Chicago, there were 2,000 people in the dorm building. This girl got on the elevator, and she said, ‘You have really nice hair, where are you from?’ I told her I was a Lakota Indian from South Dakota and she said, ‘You guys are still alive?’ That has happened often since then. “I learned that a lot has to do with the lack of being seen in the media. They think Native American people are in the past, so I am trying to portray our people in a proper light, as living and breathing today.” As advice to children hoping to pursue their dreams, Waln said, “Don’t let the borders of the reservation hold you back. It won’t be easy, you will go through trials and tribulations, and you will cry and sweat, but it can be done. There is a lot of hard work to be done especially coming from a place of oppression. But if you believe in yourself and do what you love, you’ll make it. Once I started following my passion everything fell into place. I consider myself lucky to be doing what I am doing. Follow your passion.” (Contact Christina Rose at christinarose.sd@gmail.com) Copyright permission by Native Sun News
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