I heard this song while listening to KTNN^[1] online radio recently and got curious about it because the way they say “hey boss” sounded like a word from my conlang, basically. Here’s an article from 2003 I found that touches a bit on the context of this song, in lieu of an actual translation:

https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/music/navajo-hum-6408576/

Tuba City^[2] recently received increased media attention when Lori Piestewa^[3] became the first Native American to die in U.S. military service. A good number of the reports described the western portion of the Navajo reservation as an economically despairing and challenged area, a notion that Bilagody tries to counteract in his music. “In each album, I want to do something that includes economic development because I want the people to think self-sufficiency and prove that it can be done,” he says. “We’re moving. We have our own college we’re building now, [and] the campuses are just about completed. We have two high schools. I think it’s the second largest community on Navajo. All of it is reservation. We have Bashas’. We have McDonald’s, KFC, Taco Bell. We have a Chinese food restaurant, a pizza place and a general department store.”

To honor those businesspeople, Sing for Me contained “Hey Boss,” about a young Navajo lady who runs a construction company out of the Four Corners area, and this collaboration with the Cremains follows up with “Truck Stop Chii.” “Chii’ means grandpa’ in Navajo,” says Bilagody.

So, I find this a very interesting song in its premise, this whole topic of an Indigenous national bourgeoisie in a settler-colony and what sort of place it might have. It’s like James Bilagody sees people calling the Navajo Nation an economic backwater, and replies to this characterization not by pointing out the origins of economic disparity or by challenging bourgeois notions of success, but rather by honoring Navajo business owners for promoting economic development and self-sufficiency. And we can pull out all sorts of debates and quotes from the likes of James Connolly, Fred Hampton, Mao and Ho Chi Minh about Irish capitalism, Black capitalism, Chinese and Vietnamese capitalism to compare, can’t we?

I also once heard a Togolese song by King Mensah called “Nana Benz”, made in praise of Togolese business owners, in particular the group of wax print businesswomen of the same name whose peak of relevance was in the 1970s. So everywhere there are colonized people there are colonized minds with colonized ideas of success. Yet at the same time, is it wrong for these nations to want to develop their own bourgeoisie? The whole idea of the national bourgeoisie is well that they are still capitalists with all the class interests and antagonisms that entails, but their desire to replace the imperialist bourgeoisie and take over as the new exploiters of the proletariat can be utilized to fight imperialism, and build up the productive forces for socialism, right?

So yeah. Cool song!

You should watch SPARKLE ON RAVEN: The Life of DrillGirl; it is a very good show. CēterumFurthermore cēnseōI think iūs auctōriscopyright esse dēlendummust be destroyed.