Cha Wa, the Mardi Gras Indian funk band, is on tour, set to hit the road from East to West, in support of the release of their critically acclaimed album My People. The album, released by Single Lock Records, is the band’s first full length release since their GRAMMY-nominated album Spyboy, released in 2018. Notably, the band won the Best of the Beat 2020 Award for their video “Visible Means of Support (No Justice, No Peace Remix).”

My People draws from the rich and vibrant street culture of New Orleans. Arriving via the renowned southern independent label Single Lock Records, My People exuberantly infuses contemporary sounds with the music of street parades and the Mardi Gras Indian community—a group of Black New Orleanians who pay respect to Native American tribes with beaded and feathered “suits” and music. Packed with a vivid assemblage of New Orleans sounds and stories, this collection of new original songs draws from the grooves of ‘70s New Orleans funk bands like The Meters (particularly on offerings like “Wildman” and “Bow Down”) and takes clear influence from the city’s history of brass band music, jazz, R&B, hip-hop, rock, soul and African-inspired arrangements (including a chilling cover of Bob Dylan’s “Masters Of War” in this style).

OffBeat’s John Swenson described the album as “the band’s most fully developed and wide-ranging recording. The backing tracks are played by a crack band of young musicians in the funk/rock/brass band/R&B hybrid. It’s really a kind of supersession of talented players on the New Orleans scene, a mixture of brass band veterans—trombonist Joseph ‘Jose’ Maize Jr. and trumpeter Aurélien Barnes—with more recent transplants, including [Joe] Gelini, guitarist Ari Teitel, and the phenomenal keyboardist Andriu Yanovski. A host of A-list special guests enhance the tracks. Joseph and J’Wan front the band with full Black Indian authority.”

In addition to New Orleans, stops on the tour include gigs in Salt Lake City and Santa Fe. For the full list of tour dates, click here.