Agalisiga: Carrying on Cherokee Language through Country Music
Photo by: Mike Vanata | Western AF
Written by: Meredith Lawrence
In Cherokee tradition, music and dance entwine with daily life. They’re both inherent to cultural celebration and to rituals, including preparing for a good hunt or harvest, and asking for rain. In many cases, American folk and country music (albeit with a notably shorter history) also remain an essential means of gathering and forming community. For Cherokee language country singer and teacher Agalisiga ‘Chuj’ Mackey, combining the two traditions felt daunting, but worthy.
Photo by: Mike Vanata | Western AF
“I was reluctant to want to do it honestly, at the time, because I was just a learner at music and my language,” Mackey says. “I felt like I was filling shoes that were too big for me. I didn't have any place doing that, but nobody else was gonna do it.”
Mackey, who grew up with the Cherokee musical traditions in his community as well as listening to folk, country, and metal music with his parents, only recently started making country music, himself. During the pandemic he learned guitar so he could play and sing the songs he loved with his family. After seeing a video of Mackey (posted to Facebook by his mother), family friend Jeremy Charles asked Mackey to record the country track on a contemporary album of music performed entirely in Cherokee language. To Mackey’s knowledge the result, 2022’s Anvdvnelisgi (Performers), is the first of its kind.
Learning, preserving, and reviving Cherokee language is life’s work for Mackey. Growing up in an Anglicized world, Mackey came to learn about some parts of his culture’s language and knowledge through school and study, which continues now that he is an adult. But initially, learning Cherokee language at the immersion school was tough. “It was all built around this pain that those teachers went through, and then didn't know how to not pass it down when they taught us,” Mackey says. Not until he took a hiatus from the school and began studying his language in a different setting with his parents, did his relationship to it shift.
“It didn't hurt whenever I learned there, and it made it seem not so scary,” Mackey says. “I guess that's what gave me the passion, was not being scared of it anymore.”
Mackey now teaches at the same immersion school, which has transformed into a nourishing place since his years as a student there. As a Cultural Educator, Mackey teaches cultural traditions including song and dance, meals and crafts, and tree and plant identification. Sometimes, he’s still learning right along with his students.
Photo by: Brian Harrington | Western AF
Last year, Mackey released his own album, Nasgino Inage Nidayulenvi (It Started in the Woods), an entirely Cherokee language country album. “I wanted to try to cover as many styles in this album as I could, to showcase what you can do with the language and how it can sound just as good, if not better, than English,” say Mackey.
The album listens something like a classic country sampler with tracks invoking everything from Dave Stamey’s cowboy yodel to Canned Heat’s blues harmonica, and including Hank Williams and Bob Dylan covers, as well. Writing contemporary music in Cherokee is challenging, but interesting. It’s a very literal language, making imagery, symbolism, and idioms hard to capture.
Nasgino Inage Nidayulenvi (It Started in the Woods), opens with “Tsitsutsa Tsigesv (When I Was a Boy),” a song about Mackey’s childhood: “the relationship with running creeks and swimming and spiritually cleaning yourselves in these creeks, even fishing from these creeks, getting crawdads from these creeks, spending time with your family and friends and taking care of each other,” he says.
The album also includes murder ballads, a cover of Williams’ “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” and Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released,” and “Usdi Yona (Little Bear),” a honky-tonkin’ song Mackey wrote by combining his own lyric verse with pieces of a traditional Cherokee lullaby about bears, and a bear dance song. Every morning in the adult language course at the school where he teaches, Mackey leads the class in singing “Svnale kanogid (Mornin’ Song),” which he also wrote for the album, about the dedication and work requisite to learning and reviving Cherokee language.
“It’s really hard to talk about love and the characteristics of love in Cherokee…we literally don’t have a word for ‘I love yo.u”
Mackey ends the album with “Ginliyosv (Together),” a love song for his wife, and the only song he wrote in English and translated into Cherokee. “It's really hard to talk about love and the characteristics of love in Cherokee…we literally don’t have a word for ‘I love you,’” Mackey says. “It wasn't something that we talked about. It's something that we did. It's something that we showed you.”
To master and meld the Cherokee language to fit the country music structure and ethos is its own act of love, and like the Cherokee version, more showing than telling, surely. Mackey hopes that his album will inspire others and that younger generations will take up similar projects and find meaning in studying and crafting Cherokee language projects.
“That's what the whole album is about, is language revitalization and dedicating yourself to not just learning about your people's culture or your people's language, but learning about yourself, because you are that too. It's not a separate thing,” Mackey says. “Your people's culture is your culture. Your people's language is your language. And you have not only a right to learn it, but an expectation to carry that on.”
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