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2. Mehcinut, Ultestakon, Sakomawit, Oqiton, Pomok naka Poktoinskwes: Jeremy Dutcher
LISTENING SETTING: While listening to Jeremy Dutcher’s music please gaze at a majestic deep-rooted tree, if possible, near a river. The tree could be outside in the woods or a park, or indoors in a book or on a digital device. Ponder all the tree has given us. Think about the water a tree takes and gives (called transpiration). Consider how trees speak to each other through mycorrhizal networks (that have symbiotic relationships with the tree’s roots) and through the air, using pheromones and other scent signals. Imagine the tree’s history and future and your history and future intertwined.
DESCRIPTION: Dutcher’s first album titled, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, unite Wolastoq songs (that he painstakingly transcribed from 1907 wax cylinders at the Canadian Museum of History) with his hybrid Indigenous and classical compositions. “Many of the songs I’d never heard before, because our musical tradition on the East Coast was suppressed by the Canadian Government’s Indian Act.” Jeremy heard ancestral voices singing forgotten songs and stories that had been taken from the Wolastoqiyik generations ago. As he listened to each recording, he felt his own musical impulses stirring from deep within. Long days at the archives turned into long nights at the piano, feeling out melodies and phrases, deep in dialogue with the voices of his ancestors. “I’m doing this work because there’s only about a hundred Wolastoqey speakers left,” he says. “It’s crucial for us to make sure that we’re using our language and passing it on to the next generation. If you lose the language, you’re not just losing words; you’re losing an entire way of seeing and experiencing the world from a distinctly Indigenous perspective.”
BIOGRAPHY: Jeremy Dutcher is a performer, composer, activist, musicologist and a Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) member of Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick—with all roles deeply infused in his art and way of life. His music also transcends boundaries being unapologetically playful in its incorporation of classical influences, full of reverence for the traditional songs of his home and teeming with the urgency of modern-day struggles of resistance. Jeremy studied music and anthropology at Dalhousie University, Halifax. Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa won the 2018 Polaris Music Prize and the 2019 Juno Award for Indigenous Music Album of the Year.
© 2018 Jeremy Dutcher. All rights reserved
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By OCAD University Onsite Gallery LISTENING SETTING: While listening to Jeremy Dutcher’s music please gaze at a majestic deep-rooted tree, if possible, near a river. The tree could be outside in the woods or a park, or indoors in a book or on a digital device. Ponder all the tree has given us. Think about the water a tree takes and gives (called transpiration). Consider how trees speak to each other through mycorrhizal networks (that have symbiotic relationships with the tree’s roots) and through the air, using pheromones and other scent signals. Imagine the tree’s history and future and your history and future intertwined.
DESCRIPTION: Dutcher’s first album titled, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, unite Wolastoq songs (that he painstakingly transcribed from 1907 wax cylinders at the Canadian Museum of History) with his hybrid Indigenous and classical compositions. “Many of the songs I’d never heard before, because our musical tradition on the East Coast was suppressed by the Canadian Government’s Indian Act.” Jeremy heard ancestral voices singing forgotten songs and stories that had been taken from the Wolastoqiyik generations ago. As he listened to each recording, he felt his own musical impulses stirring from deep within. Long days at the archives turned into long nights at the piano, feeling out melodies and phrases, deep in dialogue with the voices of his ancestors. “I’m doing this work because there’s only about a hundred Wolastoqey speakers left,” he says. “It’s crucial for us to make sure that we’re using our language and passing it on to the next generation. If you lose the language, you’re not just losing words; you’re losing an entire way of seeing and experiencing the world from a distinctly Indigenous perspective.”
BIOGRAPHY: Jeremy Dutcher is a performer, composer, activist, musicologist and a Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) member of Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick—with all roles deeply infused in his art and way of life. His music also transcends boundaries being unapologetically playful in its incorporation of classical influences, full of reverence for the traditional songs of his home and teeming with the urgency of modern-day struggles of resistance. Jeremy studied music and anthropology at Dalhousie University, Halifax. Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa won the 2018 Polaris Music Prize and the 2019 Juno Award for Indigenous Music Album of the Year.
© 2018 Jeremy Dutcher. All rights reserved