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When Nicholas Galanin became Ya Tseen, he was lying on his back, looking up at the stars.
“There was a moment where I was waiting for the helicopter to lift me up, and it was a clear night sky,” Galanin says. “I accepted there wasn’t much I could do but appreciate the beauty of the night.”
Galanin was lucky to survive the 2013 boat crash that left him with a broken rib, four spinal fractures and a cut on his head. The vessel had crashed straight into a sheer cliff face in the icy waters off the Alaskan coast, and when Galanin regained consciousness after the crash, the boat was still plowing full speed into the solid rock with its motor running. Coast Guard helicopters arrived shortly after, resulting in his airlift epiphany.
Following the accident, in accordance with Tlingit tradition, his father gave him a new name: “Yéil Ya-tseen,” meaning “raven, be alive.”
The 46-year-old musician and visual artist had been recording music for years under various names, first as Silver Jackson and then as Indian Agent. In 2020, he took the latter part of his Tlingit name for the latest incarnation of his long-running indie-rock project, which is currently signed to the storied Pacific Northwest label Sub Pop and has frequently toured and collaborated with Portland indie-rockers Portugal. The Man—who, like Galanin, have roots in the island community of Sitka, Alaska.
“Alaska’s got great artists and musicians,” says Galanin, who splits his time between Sitka and Honolulu. “It’s massive. Flying to Anchorage to play a show is almost the same distance of time as flying to Seattle.”
Ya Tseen’s second album, Stand On My Shoulders, out Friday, is a richly collaborative effort featuring not only Portugal. The Man but acclaimed bassist Meshell Ndegeocello, avant-garde punk-rapper Pink Siifu and Senegalese American singer-songwriter Sidibe. (The band won’t be playing in Portland anytime soon, but will be playing an album release show at Seattle’s Clock Out Lounge on Friday.)
“I feel like collaboration is such an important part of music, and I always speak to it as an alchemy that happens,” Galanin says. “There’s this potential for alchemy and transformation of ideas and songs that you can’t really get to alone, and I’ve always seen how powerful and impactful it can be.”
The music is sparkling, sleekly contoured, modern-sounding synth disco, yet it’s deeply rooted in Galanin’s family history. A member of the L’uknax.ádi clan of the Tlingit people of the Pacific Northwest coast, Galanin was immersed in music and art from a young age thanks to his father Dave Galanin (Dei Kee Tla Tin), an accomplished blues guitarist who performed under the name Strummin’ Dog.
“That appreciation for what music was definitely passed on through my father’s passion for music,” Galanin says. “He bought us our first instruments, bought us our first records.”
Dave was a visual artist as well as a musician, teaching his two sons how to work with jewelry and metals from a young age. Nicholas’ brother Jerrod is well-known for his jewelry, while Nicholas has exhibited his multidisciplinary visual art at prestigious institutions such as the Alaska State Museum and the Whitney in New York (he was among the artists who withdrew from the Whitney Biennial due to the presence of Warren Kanders, owner of the tear gas-producing company Safariland, on the board). He raised his first totem pole as lead carver in 2018, and a second one went up in 2023.
Dave “walked into the forest and passed away” in 2021, and his absence haunts the album. “The personal relationships in our lives are always embedded in music in certain ways,” Nicholas Galanin says. “But that was the biggest aspect to me of transformation in my daily life, to have somebody transition who’s both a mentor and a father.”
The interlude “Dei Kee Tla Tin” features a brief audio recording of Dave reminiscing about family members who were also artists and describing what they did with their lives. It’s one of the album’s shortest tracks but also one of its most powerful, tying Ya Tseen’s music to a long-running family and cultural lineage. Meanwhile, the striking cover art for Stand On My Shoulders is a monoprint made by the younger Galanin depicting the elder’s Tlingit ceremonial regalia, sans the wearer.
“These are the objects that the next generation will wear and be part of the culture and continuum,” he says. “It’s recognizing that the things we’re left with are the things that get to continue on.”
LISTEN: Ya Tseen’s Stand On My Shoulders is available for download Friday, Jan. 16.
