Polaris Prize-winner Jeremy Dutcher on stage at Harbourfront Theatre
Polaris Prize and Juno Awardwinner Jeremy Dutcher is set to perform songs from his debut album, “Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa”, this evening at Harbourfront Theatre in Summerside.
The show gets underway at 7:30 p.m.
Dutcher returns to Prince Edward Island after performing at the Indian River Festival this summer, as well as in Georgetown last night. For his Summerside performance, he is bringing his entire band for the full concert experience.
As a classically trained operatic tenor and composer, Dutcher takes every opportunity to blend his Wolastoq First Nation roots into the music he creates, blending distinct musical aesthetics that shape-shift between classical, traditional, and pop to form something entirely new.
A member of Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, he first did music studies in Halifax before taking a chance to work in the archives at the Canadian Museum of History, painstakingly transcribing Wolastoq songs from 1907 wax cylinders.
After hearing ancestral voices singing forgotten songs and stories that had been taken from the Wolastogiyik generations ago, 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.
Preserving and sharing his Wolastoq First Nation roots is deeply important to Dutcher, who explains that many of the songs were lost because our musical tradition was suppressed by the Canadian government.
“I’m doing this work as there’s only about a hundred Wolastoqey speakers left. It’s crucial that we’re using our language because, if you lose the language, you’re losing an entire distinct way of experiencing the world.”
Now touring around Canada and the U.S., Dutcher hopes to share these once lost voices with the public.