Klee Benally (born October 11, 1975) is the lead
vocalist
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or withou ...
and
guitarist
A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themsel ...
of
Navajo
The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people of the Southwestern United States.
With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest fe ...
punk rock band
Blackfire.
["Klee Benally Awarded the 2010 Livable Community Award."]
''Friends of Flagstaff.'' (retrieved 28 Nov 2010) Benally is also an activist, artist, silversmith, and filmmaker. He also performs traditional Navajo dances
''Anartist Films.'' (retrieved 28 Nov 2010) and is a champion
fancy war dancer.
Background
Benally was born in 1975 in
Flagstaff, Arizona
Flagstaff ( ) is a city in, and the county seat of, Coconino County in northern Arizona, in the southwestern United States. In 2019, the city's estimated population was 75,038. Flagstaff's combined metropolitan area has an estimated population ...
. His parents are Jones, a traditional
Navajo
The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native Americans in the United States, Native American people of the Southwestern United States.
With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest fe ...
medicine man
A medicine man or medicine woman is a traditional healer and spiritual leader who serves a community of Indigenous people of the Americas. Individual cultures have their own names, in their respective languages, for spiritual healers and cerem ...
, and Berta Benally, a
folk singer and songwriter born to
Russian-
Polish Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
parents.
His sister is
Jeneda and his brother is Clayson. They belong to the Bitter Water Clan. Together they grew up on
Black Mesa,
Tusayan, and Flagstaff but their father is from
Black Mesa,
Navajo Nation
The Navajo Nation ( nv, Naabeehó Bináhásdzo), also known as Navajoland, is a Native Americans in the United States, Native American Indian reservation, reservation in the United States. It occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwe ...
. Benally was featured as a model in contract photographer John Running's work from the 1990s to 2000s. Benally and his family have been photographed by Running as part of an agreement with
Canyon Records
Canyon Records of Phoenix, Arizona is a record label that has produced and distributed Native American music for 56 years.
History
Canyon was founded in 1951 by Ray and Mary Boley, who had opened the first recording studio in Phoenix, Arizona ...
that distributes music by their band
Blackfire. Klee now lives with his wife, Princess, in Flagstaff.
[Dunaway and Beer 202] He is an
anarchist
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessar ...
.
Music
Klee, Jeneda, and Clayson formed the punk band,
Blackfire in 1989. They have toured internationally.
[ They incorporate aspects of traditional ]Navajo music
Navajo music is music made by Navajos, mostly hailing from the Four Corners region of the Southwestern United States and the territory of the Navajo Nation. While it traditionally takes the shape of ceremonial chants and echoes themes found in Din ...
in their songs. They were also influenced by bands such as Ramones
The Ramones were an American punk rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first true punk rock group. Despite achieving a limited commercial appeal in the United St ...
, Dead Kennedys
Dead Kennedys are an American punk rock band that formed in San Francisco, California, in 1978. The band was one of the defining punk bands during its initial eight-year run.
Dead Kennedys' lyrics were usually political in nature, satirizing ...
, Subhumans, Crass
Crass were an English art collective and punk rock band formed in Epping, Essex in 1977, who promoted anarchism as a political ideology, a lifestylism, way of life, and a resistance movement. Crass popularised the anarcho-punk movement of the ...
, Bad Brains
Bad Brains are an American rock band formed in Washington, D.C. in 1976. Originally a jazz fusion band under the name Mind Power, they are widely regarded as pioneers of hardcore punk, though the band's members have objected to the use of this t ...
, and other punk bands. The name refers to the pollution, especially from coal mining
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...
, on the Navajo Nation.
Video and film
Benally has made many documentary shorts.[ He directed a documentary called "The Snowbowl Effect," which addresses proposed ski area development on Arizona's ]San Francisco Peaks
The San Francisco Peaks (Navajo: , es, Sierra de San Francisco, Hopi: ''Nuva'tukya'ovi'', Western Apache: ''Dził Tso'', Keres: ''Tsii Bina'', Southern Paiute: ''Nuvaxatuh'', Havasupai-Hualapai: ''Hvehasahpatch''/''Huassapatch''/''Wik'hanbaj ...
. He is currently in production of a feature film he wrote and directed called "Power Lines."
Community work
He was also the coordinator of the southwest Native American Film and Video Festival at the Museum of Northern Arizona
The Museum of Northern Arizona is a museum in Flagstaff, Arizona, United States, that was established as a repository for Indigenous material and natural history specimens from the Colorado Plateau.
The museum was founded in 1928 by zoologist ...
in 2004 and 2005. He has co-founded grassroots projects such as the Taala Hoghan Infoshop, Indigenous Action Media, Outta Your Backpack Media Project, Flagstaff Activist Network and the Save the Peaks Coalition.[ "Our generation has a whole lot of anger," says Benally. "We can try to turn negative into positive, be productive."][Spina 127] In May 2010, Klee was part of a direct action
Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to oth ...
where he and 5 others locked down at Tucson Border Patrol Headquarters to protest border militarization on Indigenous lands and Arizona SB 1070
The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (introduced as Arizona Senate Bill 1070 and commonly referred to as Arizona SB 1070) is a 2010 legislative Act in the U.S. state of Arizona that was the broadest and strictest a ...
.
Awards and recognition
He won numerous awards for his art at the Heard Museum in Phoenix and was the first student to win Best Show at the Navajo art show at the Museum of Northern Arizona
The Museum of Northern Arizona is a museum in Flagstaff, Arizona, United States, that was established as a repository for Indigenous material and natural history specimens from the Colorado Plateau.
The museum was founded in 1928 by zoologist ...
in 1991. In 2010, Benally was awarded the Livable Community Award by a Flagstaff community group for his work for social and environmental justice.[
]
Notes
References
* Dunaway, David King and Molly Beer
''Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals.''
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. .
* Spina, Stephanie Urso, ed
''Some and Mirrors: The Hidden Context of Violence in Schools and Society.''
Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000. .
External links
Save the Peaks
Interview with Klee Benally about the LA Anarchist Bookfair
Blackfire
official website
Indigenous Action Media
Indigenous Action Media
Outta Your Backpack Media
Indigenous Youth Empowerment
Taala Hooghan Infoshop
Indigenous Established Infoshop Flagstaff, AZ
{{DEFAULTSORT:Benally, Klee
Living people
1975 births
21st-century American guitarists
21st-century American singers
21st-century Native Americans
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American punk rock guitarists
American punk rock singers
Film directors from Arizona
Guitarists from Arizona
Jewish American musicians
Jewish rock musicians
Jewish singers
Jews in punk rock
Native American activists
Native American filmmakers
Native American jewelers
Native American singers
Navajo musicians
People from Coconino County, Arizona
Singers from Arizona
Songwriters from Arizona
21st-century American Jews
20th-century Native Americans
American anarchists
Jewish anarchists