SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
We often hear about the ways in which technology is changing our relationship to the past. One teenager from the tiny village of Toksook Bay, Alaska, is using technology to revitalize his language and culture and bring it to the rest of the world. Josie Holtzman and Isaac Kestenbaum have more.
ISAAC KESTENBAUM, BYLINE: Byron Nicholai was 14 when he started his Facebook page, I Sing, You Dance.
JOSIE HOLTZMAN, BYLINE: He uploaded this homemade music video of him covering Nikki Minaj's "Anaconda."
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BYRON NICHOLAI: (Singing) My anaconda don't, my anaconda don't want none unless you got buns, hon.
KESTENBAUM: His friends liked the video so he posted a few more. One day, though, eager to please his audience but with no zany idea in mind, he decided to ditch the chipmunk voice and posted a video of himself singing traditional music in his own voice and in his first language, Yup'ik.
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NICHOLAI: (Singing in Yup'ik).
KESTENBAUM: The videos went viral.
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NICHOLAI: (Singing in Yup'ik).
HOLTZMAN: Nicholai is 18 now. In the past year, he was featured in a short documentary that premiered at Sundance, he's one of the Obama administration's Arctic Youth Ambassadors and he's even performed at the State Department in Washington, D.C. His first big hit was a song called "I Am Yup'ik."
To continue reading this interview, go to: http://www.npr.org/2016/04/09/...onal-alaskan-culture
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