|
|
|
Music & Dance Shadowyze Pensacola, Florida Native America Rap Shawn Enfinger, aka Shadowyze, is a rap artist of Cherokee and Creek descent and a member of the Santa Rosa County Creek Tribe in Northwest Florida who writes music exposing injustices against Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Born in San Antonio, Texas and raised in Pensacola, Florida, Enfinger has been rapping as Shadowyze (pronounced "shadow wise") since the late 1980s. Drawing from the richness of his multicultural heritage, Shadowyze conveys through his techno-laden hip-hop his serious concerns over the treatment of Native populations across North America to the Maya of Central America. He has been delivering his message to a widespread, diverse audience: his songs have been played on Native American-owned radio stations in North America and Europe; he has toured Indian reservations across the U.S., including Creek, Cherokee, Seminole, Potawatomi, and Oneida communities in Florida, Oklahoma and Wisconsin; and he has performed at museum of Native American culture in Germany and at the Montreux Jazz Fest in Switzerland. His solo album Murder in Our Backyard was also nominated for the Native American Music Awards in the Best Rap category. Enfinger, who earned a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of West Florida, has experienced many harsh and heart-saddening conditions of poverty and injustice that indigenous people endure outside the US. He spent three months in the Yucatan and Chiapas, Mexico, Ecuador and Peru where he witnessed the atrocities firsthand: constant riots; bloody police beatings in the streets; villages burned by the military; rampant drug use; extremely impoverished conditions. Shawn continues to volunteer for the Mayan Indian Relief Fund founded by his friend Ricky Long. In support of his political beliefs, Shadowyze recently participated in two large protests, one in Washington, D.C. in support of jailed Native American Leonard Peltier, and the other in Ft. Benning, Georgia to protest the training of Central American militaries there. Shadowyze is a tireless warrior for justice and equality for humanity who believes that "music is a key component for doing this by bringing people together to have fun and maybe even learn something at the same time." Links http://www.shadowyze.com/cgi-bin/esp?PAGE=shad/fbio.esp |
|
© Copyright 2002. All Rights Reserved. |