Broken Treaties

Broken Treaties is a composition that was inspired by The Trail of Broken Treaties. This event took place from October to November 1972, where several American Indian organizations collaborated together to bring attention to American Indian issues. The main issues were living standards and treaty rights, or treaty violations. During this time, protestors traveled by car or bus from the Northwest coast to Washington D.C. to discuss their issues with the Government. When no one was there to hear their case, the people of this movement overtook the Bureau of Indian Affairs building. Those involved include people from the American Indian Movement (AIM), Canada’s National Indian Brotherhood, and the Native American Rights Fund.

The form of this composition is short but complex. Not including the intro/outro, which are the same, the tune is 12 bars long. It is very similar to a blues, except for the metric changes. For this reason, I like to think of this composition as a metric blues. Here is a rundown of the form: the first four bars are A minor in 6/4 time. Instead of going to d minor for two measures, as a minor blues would, I brought the tune to E7 for two measures, and extended the time signature to 7/4 for those two bars. The following two bars are back to A minor in 6/4 time. The remaining four bars are in 4/4 time, with hits on this turnaround, going from, B minor, Bb7, C#7, E7, which are one chord per measure.

I believe the bass line is very important because it is so consistent. The consistency is what allowed me to be able to go from one time signature to another so seamlessly. That, and having musicians with enough focus and discipline to be able to get comfortable playing complex rhythms.

I originally wrote this while playing around on guitar about 10 years ago. It wasn’t until I transcribed the riffs that I realized there were mixed time signatures. That being said, I would not go out of my way to right something so complex unless I felt it had good feel, was musical, and playable.