Hataałii, Help Us!
By Lauren Hernandez
Introducing Hataałii: Singer, Songwriter, Poet, Crooner
I listened to Hataałii a lot when my dog died this past winter. His crooning vocals and swooning guitar spoke to me. He was a little happier than the Eddy Arnold and Bob Dylan records I’d been spinning, and each song on every album flowed together so that I could listen to a never-ending Hataałii loop while trying not to cry, again.
They always say “never meet your idols,” but some of the best art comes when you do just that. Remember Lester Bangs’ infamous interview with Lou Reed?
Anyways, I called up one of my idols, Hataałii, today. He was a man of few words, but maybe that’s because he’s sung them all already, and the fact that I’m still pretty new to this whole journalism business.
Hataałiinez Wheeler, Hataałii is a Navajo term that means “to sing” by the way, is only 20 years old and has almost four and a half hours worth of music under his belt. It’s an accomplishment that few his age have, but to him it’s just life.
He lives the life of a true poet.
“I just kinda lay around for a living. I’ve been doing DoorDash, but currently I’m in Los Angeles, mixing my new album for the next week or so.” This new album is different from his others in that the songs all sound apart from each other. It’s because he wrote some of them last month, and others four years ago.
Social media has been a big help for finding opportunities to share his music and poetry with the world, but consistency is also key.
“I just tried to be consistent, as much as I could. And I try to be consistent as much as I can. I try to just make it easy for myself, to make music, to write stuff…”
Back when he was in boarding school, he tried to write a song a day.
“Not because I was like, forcing myself to do it or anything, just because I didn’t really have anything else to do. I wasn’t in sports or anything.”
Every weekend he’d come home and record his new music in his dad’s tool shed. He first learned how to play the bass, and then picked up the acoustic guitar. Soon after this, he began writing songs, continuing to learn instruments so that he could complete them.
“There’s also not that many band members or people that play instruments on the rez, and so I just figured I’d play them for myself” he added.
Now with four albums out, Hataałii reflected on how the landscape has influenced the sonic variation in his discography. He started out playing music in Window Rock, Arizona, and “really there’s nothing out there. It’s just hills and sound wise there’s just birds and bugs.”
When he moved to Albuquerque, the songs became faster and more complex.
“There’s just a lot to them,” he explained, owing the added sounds and noise to the busyness of the city and the urgency of the people there.
When it comes down to the structure of his songs, “I would say there are elements of Navajo, not only storytelling, but Navajo cadence… not only in the sounds but in the instruments as well.”
He had a hard time naming inspirations for his music, which I found ironic, since the web always has a plethora of people to compare his new sound to, from the Gun Club to Jonathan Richman. He cited his grandpas and Rodriguez, but said he doesn’t like his music taste, and he’s been listening to the same stuff since elementary school. He claimed that everyone around him has a much more sophisticated and “immaculate” taste in music that his can’t really compare to.
“I think it’s because I use Apple Music, I really need to switch over to Spotify.”
In the end, I let Hataałii know how important his music is, but he couldn’t fully agree. “It’s just fun to do music and it’s nice to see other people enjoy it. I can’t tell if I’m downplaying it or not. I guess I don’t even know how I feel about it.”
So I guess that means you’ll have to listen to it, and see for yourself how Hataałii turns moments into poems and landscapes into lyrics.
