3 minute read
INDIGENOUS MUSICIANS SPEAK UP! AT STUDIO BELL
STUDIO BELL HIGHLIGHTS INDIGENOUS ARTISTS
Speak Up! exhibition honours Canadian musicians who make a difference
Advertisement
BY KARINA ZAPATA
During his 2018 Polaris Music Prize-winning speech, Jeremy Dutcher spoke in his Wolastoq language, then transitioned to English. “Canada, you are in the midst of an Indigenous renaissance,” he said while accepting the award for his debut album, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa (Maliseet Songs). “Music is changing this land, and what you see on this stage is the future.”
The classically trained operatic tenor takes every opportunity to blend his Tobique First Nation roots and traditional language into the music he creates, which incorporates classical, contemporary, traditional and jazz. It’s a fusion that, he said in a 2018 interview with Billboard Magazine, is “about disrupting the bilingual Anglo-centric Canadian music narrative.”
Dutcher is among 10 artists highlighted in a new exhibition at Studio Bell, home of the National Music Centre (NMC), in partnership with TD, that honours powerful Indigenous voices in music. Titled Speak Up!, it features artists who have, or are, making social and political impacts in Canada, and are inspiring a new generation to act.
Other featured artists include: singer-songwriter and First Nations activist Willie Dunn, trip-hop singer-songwriter iskwe, eight-time Grammy-nominees Northern Cree, filmmaker and musician Alanis Obomsawin, Aboriginal poet, painter, broadcaster and filmmaker Dr. Duke Redbird, Anishinaabe singer-songwriter and emcee Leonard Sumner, Ottawa-based rock band Seventh Fire, Inuit throat singer and experimental artist Tanya Tagaq, and ground-breaking Cree hip-hop group War Party.
Dutcher’s appearance in the exhibit comes just three years after his residency with NMC, where he recorded the demos for his now Polaris Prize and Juno Awardwinning album. Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa incorporates William Mechling’s wax cylinder recordings from Maliseet communities in the early 1900s with Dutcher’s own shapeshifting compositions.
A performer, composer, activist, and musicologist, Dutcher was inspired to create the album as a means to keep his ancestors alive. “The preservation of language is the most integral part of this whole project because when we lose a language, we’re not just losing words,” he said while in residence in 2016. “What we’re really losing is an entire way of thinking and of moving through the world.”
At the launch of Speak Up!, exhibition curator David McLeod also spoke to the origins and survival of Indigenous music throughout history. “When the first musicologists were riding the waters to reach the North, they were searching out to record a people they thought were going to disappear, a culture that was going to disappear — and it hasn’t disappeared,” he said. “Indigenous people are still here. Indigenous music is definitely still here.”
While the exhibit currently features 10 artists, more will be included over the years. McLeod says there is a wealth of Indigenous music and history needing long overdue recognition in Canada, and he hopes to share even more of their stories as the exhibit evolves. “The National Music Centre is at the centre of lifting up Indigenous music in this country right now and that needs to be applauded,” said McLeod.
Jeremy Dutcher is featured in Speak Up!, a new permanent exhibition at Studio Bell.
The Holidays aren’t the Holidays without music. Celebrate the Season with the CPO!
Sounds of the Season: On the Road
27 November 2019 / 7:30PM Shane Homes YMCA 28 November 2019 / 7:30PM Brookfield YMCA 3 December 2019 / 7:30PM Magnolia Banquet Hall 18 + 19 December 2019 / 7:30PM Grace Presbyterian Church
Holiday Pops with Rune + Jens
Handel’s Messiah
Paul Brandt’s Country Christmas
10 December 2019 / 7:30PM Bella Concert Hall 11 + 12 December 2019 / 7:30PM Jack Singer Concert Hall
RUNE BERGMANN
Music Director
