Nahko has built a career with deeply personal, reflective songwriting, and Take Your Power Back is his most profound, revelatory, and fully developed collection to date. “This album came out of a reawakening,” says Nahko. “I found myself entering a new chapter in life, and writing these songs was my way of processing all the changes I was going through.”
Nahko’s journey to find himself is still unfolding. Born to a Puerto Rican/Native American mother and a Filipino father, he was adopted by a white, conservative, Christian family in Oregon, and raised under the name David Bell. He learned that he is a sixth-generation Apache and took on the moniker of Nahko, a play on his middle name-Nahkoe-ese, which translates to Little Bear, as a way to reclaim his roots. Take Your Power Back is a collection of songs that reveals insights into the soul of a man seeking to move forward in a life still forming conclusions, observations and writing about his passions to share with his audiences.
In 2011, Nahko, backed by his band, released his debut album On The Verge, with his true breakthrough coming two years later with Dark As Night. That album was a critical and commercial breakout, landing in the Top 10 on Billboard’s Heatseekers Chart, which earned the band festival slots at Outside Lands, Wanderlust, Bumbershoot, Electric Forest and more. Over the next four years he released two more celebrated albums with his band, solidifying his reputation along the way as an outspoken activist and advocate for social and environmental justice.
Take Your Power Back was recorded in Los Angeles, executive produced by cut&dry, musically tackling struggle with grief, trauma, reconciliation, learning to face heartache head on, and embracing the serenity and peace that comes with understanding and acceptance. While these subjects might seem heavy, the music is uplifting, blending socially conscious Folk and Rock with soulful, Alt-R&B, and genre-bending production. “All of our great teachers have taught us that our inner heaven is the path to enlightenment, to self-love and becoming whole,” explains Nahko. To date, Nahko And Medicine For the People have released three beautifully performed songs from Take Your Power Back to radio including, “Lifeguard”, Slow Down,” and “Garden.” The songs reveal Nahko’s struggle to find himself and his purpose in life, using meditation to seek inner peace and enlightenment, and that revelation is connecting at radio as stations like WRLT, L.A’s 88.5FM, WAPS, and WDST are just a few of the stations on “Lifeguard.”
