THREE CULTURES, ONE SONG
School’s anthem becomes global hit
Ten-year-old Brynn Rice stood in front of her St. Willibrord School student body with nine fellow songwriters last week, as students, teachers and parents stood in ovation at what everyone had just seen.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, this is going to everywhere. I’m so excited,’ ” said Rice, the diminutive blond Mohawk from Kahnawake, who performs in “Dreamchild,” a trilingual school anthem turned viral video sensation that launched at a school assembly Nov. 22.
Music teacher Caroline Bouchard came up with the concept, and teamed up with executive producer David Hodges of N’we Jinan to update the school song and produce a music video with the Grade 5 and 6 students.
The result is a huge hit garnering likes, shares, retweets and straight-up praise across the country including a word from Canada’s Prime Minister.
“Now this is a beautiful way to celebrate diversity,” wrote Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Twitter on Nov. 25.
“I thought that I was dreaming,” said Rice, when she saw the prime minister’s tweet, and praise from his wife Sophie Grégoire Trudeau.
“We love you too!” wrote Grégoire Trudeau on her Facebook page.
“You children are dream-like… Walk fearlessly towards the future!”
The video has been viewed thousands of times, and the singers have appeared on TV and radio, signed autographs and become the centre of attention from their school in Châteauguay.
Actor Brittany LeBorgne, star of the APTN series Mohawk Girls, grew up in Kahnawake, and was blown away after seeing the video.
“The message is so powerful,” said LeBorgne, who now lives in Montreal. “It’s about coming together and accepting each other, supporting and loving each other, embracing each other, a message I think the world is in great need of right now.”
No one was more surprised at the song ’s success than the school’s music teacher, who only wanted to create a humble song to celebrate a small elementary school’s diverse population.
“I knew it was going to be great, but I didn’t do it for the world to see; I did it for St. Willibrord,” said Bouchard. “I had the students write a song for themselves. I couldn’t have anticipated that.”
“We’re expressing ourselves in all different cultures and how we do things differently,” said Lexi Horn, 11, from Kahnawake. “How we’re different and can still be friends.”
N’we Jinan, a company co-founded by former grand chief of the Cree Nation Youth Council Joshua Iserhoff, helped the students put their expressions into lyrics, and produced the video and song.
“For us, as an organization, it is our goal to make young people feel like they have a voice, to validate their aspirations,” said Hodges. “When some of our projects get unexpected attention and momentum, we know that there was an honesty to the approach of the song, that there’s something special about the project that can’t be described.”
Grade 5 singer Erica Robertson hoped to show off the French, English and Mohawk students in her school when working on the song.
“We wanted to put an inspiring message in it,” she said. “We wanted it to be representative of the three cultures that we have in our school.”
Quasy Buckley enters the song hip-hop style.
“For a dream, you can be anywhere you want,” said Buckley, who passes the mic to his friend Alexander Leblanc in the song. “I find that this trip is: hard work pays off,” said Leblanc, whose father is French and mother English. “We worked hard and never gave up.”
Leblanc plays hockey in Kahnawake, and was excited to visit his friends’ community, a place some of his classmates had never seen — even though it’s only a five-minute drive down Highway 138.
Kahnawake is home for Keenan Williams, who was six years old when the Idle No More movement swept across Canada and internationally in 2012, drawing attention to long-standing Indigenous issues and grievances.
He was not a part of the protest movement at the time, but knows of its importance and wears a Tshirt emblazoned with the slogan in the video while wrapped in a Warrior flag.
“I just wanted to represent my people and the song is about accomplishing your dreams and bringing people together, so the shirt was for my people and I just wanted to bring everybody together by wearing that shirt,” Williams said.
Rice believes the video and song has resonated with so many people because of its inspiring message.
“You’ve got French and English and Mohawk, and because we’re kids,” he said. “They don’t think we can do this, and it’s very cute. A lot of people say we’re cute.” Her teacher agrees.
“It wasn’t just for our English community, it wasn’t just for our French community, it wasn’t just for our Native community, it was for everyone who belongs to our school community,” said Bouchard.
“I wanted every student in our school to be able to connect in some way, some how in a very meaningful way because that was the whole point. It was meant to be a school anthem. Not just for one person, not just for a couple, not just for most of us. (It is) for every one in our school.”