“We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us,” Pura Fé belts out on the song Borders from her latest album Full moon rising.

While she’s always stood up for the little guys, Pura Fé (“pure faith” in Spanish) has brought out her most politically outspoken and indigenous album to date. Born into the Tuscarora Indian nation, originally from North Carolina, she sees her music partly as a vehicle for keeping the culture alive, against all the odds.

“It’s a challenge, we’ve lost so much, but writing and singing songs in native tongues helps a lot,” she says. Songs like Mahk Jchi (a Tutelo melody that’s at least 1,000 years old) and traditional native chants like Dubngeh.

In Red, black on blues Fé mixes native canoe chants, evoking how Tuscurora natives would paddle the Nez and Ranoka rivers in North Carolina and Virginia, with the air of Amazing grace. Additional vocals are provided by the Mohawk rapper Brutha War. The song talks of the strong links between “reds” and “blacks”: their shared cultural history and suffering.

In Stand up for human pride, Fé takes a swipe at the former US administration. “Don’t believe the lies, stand up for human pride,” she chants. Lies such as weapons of mass destruction or the Katrina hurricane in New Orleans, which Fé says has allowed the city to be whitened up. “I spoke to several people who said they heard bombs going off at the time […] The US has a special sort of propaganda; I’m amazed at how ready people are to believe it.”

Tuscarora is a matriarchal society and while women alone may not be able to put the world to rights, Fé clearly believes they have a big role to play. She pays homage to women’s strength and importance in songs like Daughters (sung in the tutelo tongue – a Siaouan dialect) and the soulful Women sacred (featuring native female rapper Leilani).

Harper Simon

Harper Simon also gives his mum a look in in his debut album. She was born in Nashville, Tennessee, where the album was recorded, and the song Tennessee is dedicated to her.

What’s more it was co-written with his dad, Paul. But the collaboration more or less stops there. The young singer/songwriter/guitarist has managed to put his own mark on this 10-track debut album. At times more maudlin than the Americano-pop of Simon and Garfunkel, it has a strong folk and country feel. Simon says he made it in tribute to the good old long playing record, “probably one of the most important inventions of the 20th century”.

What really inspires him is great albums and trying to make a good one. Albums like Sergeant Pepper’s lonely hearts club band, Harvest, Sticky fingers or «Blonde on blonde. It comes as little surprise that the album was produced by the legendary Bob Johnston. He enlisted the talents of some of the best session musicians of the 60s and 70s, people that had worked with Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield. Harper Simon is also joined by more contemporary talent like Sean Lennon. A new big family is born.