4 Push Ups

Bringing the vibrance of Pow Wow and indigenous culture to the masses with hip hop from the unceded land of east van.

Watch the video

Length3 mins. 55 secs.

GenreHip Hop

Video

Pitch video

The artist

Hayley Gray

View artist's website

About the song

A classic rap ballad, straight up, tells the story of Pow Wow: songs have 4 Push Ups, marking score cards, dance your style: grass, fancy, jingle. Pow Wow is both a competition & the place for summer romance. The song is a celebration of Pow Wow enlightening other communities to a new world and experience, as rap music has down since its inception

The team

Let's make a music video!

Hayley Gray

jerilynn webster Artist

Michelle RunnsArtist

Sino GeneralBand

Jessie AnthonyProducer

Production Design

East Vancouver’s indigenous community is one with a long and complicated history, it is a place many have called home, many have gone missing. Here we want to create living portraits of our musicians, dancers and their children in a similar style to Beyonce’s Lemonade, displaying the regality, resilience and fragility of a persecuted but never conquered people. Enter-Tribal will rap, with and in their community. In the stills below we Enter-Tribal in East Van Alleys. In the living portraits camera will move while our subjects hold their place, here we watch them own their land & their power.

CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT / FREEDOM IN MOVEMENT. Take this beautiful studio moment from Beyonce’s Ghost, add the colours and textures of regalia as seen in PowWow Sweat with the beautiful inserts of A Tribe Called Red’s Stadium Pow Wow, & you have our next set up. Using high frame rates and a controlled location we will shoot full and inserts shots of tradition, grass, hoop and jingle dancers. We will play with the speed to connect the rhythms and swells of the song. Enter-Tribal members: are Pow Wow dancers, we will showcase their dances with the dance work of Shyama Priya and Lisa Monchalin.

We want to document our dancers on the natural vistas east of Vancouver in the Nicola Valley connecting dancers and regalia with earth and sky. Whether grass, jingle or fancy we will capture and captivate the movement, the energy and the drive of these dances using a more varied mix of shots than the white space, wides, to full, medium to close ups and inserts the camera previously stationary will find its movement here. We’ve pulled a few moments from two A Tribe Called Red music videos: Stadium Pow Wow and Stand Up / Stand N Rock #NoDAPL which encapsulate the essence of this set up.

For over 60 years pow wows and all the traditions they facilitated were outlawed. Another travesty at the hands of the Indian Act. This lead to two generations, raised without the songs, dances, stories, traditions, ceremonies and celebrations of their nations and communities. While Canada celebrates 150 years of existence, we celebrate 150 of resistance. Pow wow cultures ability to strive and survive is a testament to the resilience of indigenous nations and their people.