Pura Fé 

Pura Fé Crescioni

MUSICIAN / SINGER / COMPOSER / ACTIVIST 

Pura Fé, whose name means “Pure Faith,”

by DALE RICARDO SHIELDS

Pura Fé is a celebrated singer-songwriter, musician, and Indigenous activist of Tuscarora and Taino heritage. She is best known for her soulful fusion of Native American ancestral music with Deep South blues, often performed on a lap-steel slide guitar. 

As the founding member of the internationally renowned Native Women’s a cappella trio Ulali, Pura Fé helped to create a movement throughout Indian Country, which not only empowered Native Women’s “hand drum and harmony but also built a bridge for Native music into the mainstream music scene. 

More recently, deep cultural roots have brought her to the world of Native Blues, where she is known for her lap-steel slide guitar recordings. Her body of work is extensive, including six solo albums, one of which won her a Grand Prix du Disque from Académie Charls Cros (French Grammy) for Best World Album in 2006 for Tuscarora Nation Blues, and a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist for Follow Your Heart’s Desire. 

Pura Fé’s music has been featured on many movie soundtracks, documentaries, and television commercials. She tours world festivals, has earned platinum album sales in Italy. She supports many social injustice gatherings as a presenter and musician; she leads musical workshops and college courses, performs for benefits and was featured in the award-winning 2017 documentary, RUMBLE: The Indians that Rocked the World.”

“WE WERE BRED TOGETHER ON SLAVE PLANTATIONS DURING COLONIZATION OF OUR LAND. THIS UNION GAVE BIRTH TO A RICH NEW CULTURE BLENDING RELIGION, DANCE, FOOD, GOOD-LOOKING PEOPLE AND THE BLUES.”  – Pura Fé Crescioni

Musical Career & Legacy 

• Founding Ulali: She co-founded the world-renowned Native women’s a cappella group Ulali, which bridged Native music into the mainstream.
• Solo Work: Her solo albums, including Follow Your Heart’s Desire and Hold The Rain, explore the historical links between Indigenous and Black cultures in the South.
• Key Collaborations: She has toured and recorded with major artists like Rhiannon Giddens (as part of the Silkroad Ensemble), Neil Young, and Robbie Robertson.
• Film & Documentaries: She was featured in the award-winning 2017 documentary Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World, which highlights Indigenous influence on popular music.

Activism & Heritage

• Cultural Restoration: Her work focuses on fighting the erasure of Native culture and restoring ancestral traditions, such as the Tribal Canoe Song Project.
• Environmental Advocacy: She uses her platform to denounce threats to the environment, specifically targeting corporate impacts on Native lands.
• Ninth Generation Singer: Born in New York City, she is the ninth generation in a long maternal line of singers from the Tuscarora Nation.

 In 2006, she received the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque for World Music from the Académie Charles Cros. 

MONTPELLIER, FRANCE – JULY 25: Pura Fe performs on stage at Parc Frederic Biquet on July 25, 2007 in Montpellier, France. (Photo by Jordi Vidal/Redferns)

Pura Fé, whose name means “Pure Faith,” was born in New York City and an heir to the Tuscarora Indian Nation.

She is an artist, an activist, and much more. 

 ~Singer, songwriter, musician, poet, artist, dancer, actor, teacher, and activist.~

This “Renaissance woman” is the founding member of the internationally renowned native woman’s a capella trio, ‘Ulali’, and is recognized for creating a new genre, bringing Native contemporary music to the forefront of the “mainstream” music industry.

“When you have many lineages, all that stuff is alive, it’s in you, it’s in your veins, you know? The way your hair curls, it’s in your thought, it’s what you’re made of, your memory. So, all of that, it’s old, it goes back to the beginning of everything. So, whatever codes are in you usually come out.”

“With her voice soaring, foot stomping, this beautiful songbird

transcends time and brings the message of our Ancestors who

have sewn this beautiful seed, that makes powerful music”.

-Taj Mahal

People you Love — Pura Fe et and  Éric Bibb

“Fabulous … astonishing … playing searing, slicing, lap-style bottleneck guitar, Tuscarora tribe descendant Pura Fé blends world beat rythms with Southern blues and her own powerful vocals.”

— Joel Selvin, San Francisco Chronicle

Pura Fe – My people My Land

Pura Fé is perhaps the greatest teacher of how the lives and musical traditions of African and Native peoples in America were deeply intertwined.

Pura Fé (born: Pura Fé Antonia (“Toni”) Crescioni) is a singer-songwriter, poet, musician, artist, and social activist. She created a style and genre that blends traditional Native American music with contemporary musical styles. She currently resides in Durham, North Carolina, and performs internationally with the Pura Fé Trio. She was born in New York City and raised by her mother and family of female singers who are descendants of the Tuscarora Nation that had migrated from North Carolina to New York in the early 1900s.

Her mother, Nanice Lund, whose parents are mixed-blood Indian, was a classically trained opera singer who toured with Duke Ellington and his Sacred Concert Series.

Her father, the late Juan Antonio Crescioni-Collazo was from Puerto Rico, of Taino Indian and Corsican ancestry. He named her Pura Fé which translates from Spanish as “Pure Faith.”

Pura Fe and the Music Maker Blues Revue perform Summertime Live in Germany

As an adolescent, Pura Fé studied and performed with the American Ballet Theatre company, briefly trained at Martha Graham school, and performed in several Broadway musicals, including The Me Nobody Knows, Ari, and Via Galactica. She also sang with the Mercer Ellington Orchestra.

She attended a small professional school, Lincoln Square Academy, along with classmates Laurence Fishburne, Ben Stiller, Robbie Benson, Stephanie Mills, Gion Carlo Esposito, Pia Zadora, Scott Jacoby, and her childhood friend, Irene Cara. In the late 1970s, she worked as a waitress at the famous club Max’s Kansas City in New York. It was soon after that she began singing in bands and began working as a studio singer. She recorded jingles, commercials, backup vocals, and lead on demos and recordings such as Good Enough written by James McBride, and recorded soon after by Anita Baker.