Nahko and Medicine for the People surfaced early in the 2010s with a worldwide blend of pulsing soul, R&B, folk, rock, and hip-hop, fronted by the magnetic Nahko Bear—also known as Nahkohe Parayno—a sixth-generation Apache/Mohawk whose mother is Puerto Rican and Indian and whose father is Filipino. The ensemble channeled its cross-cultural, inspirational ethos across successive releases that gained wider traction, notably the breakthrough 2016 set Hoka, before Nahko issued his debut solo project and later reconvened the unit for the vigorous 2020 outing Take Your Power Back.
Raised by a traditional white household outside Portland, Oregon, Nahko encountered formative struggles with self-identity until music provided grounding. He began studying piano at six, later offering instruction and staging school productions as a teenager. Those abilities secured him a temporary role in production in Denali, Alaska, where the surrounding wilderness helped coalesce the musical, cultural, and philosophical strands of his emerging artistic outlook.
Viewing music as a borderless, cross-generational, and multicultural vehicle for redemption and restoration, he enlisted backing players collectively known as Medicine for the People, centered on trumpeter and Berklee School of Music alum Max Ribner together with percussionist Hope Medford. The collective forged the percussive, kaleidoscopic hybrid termed “thump-hop,” a dense amalgam of idioms that frequently veers into spoken-word territory and functions as a contemporary traveling tonic for thought and spirit.
Their first full-length, Dark as Night, surfaced in 2013 and entered the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart at number six. The follow-up, 2014’s On the Verge, preceded the 2016 release of Hoka on SideOneDummy, which climbed to number 72 on the Billboard 200 and signaled a major leap for the act, now a regular presence on festival stages. Twelve months afterward, Nahko issued the introspective solo album My Name Is Bear under his own name, describing it as a “prequel” assembled largely from material composed prior to the band’s formation. Medicine for the People regrouped for Take Your Power Back in 2020, a reflective collection addressing trauma and healing.
