Montreal Gazette

OBOMSAWIN’S COMEBACK

Filmmaker and musician returns to the stage

- T’CHA DUNLEVY

Not only am I saying to myself, ‘My god, have I got a voice?’ What I sing about is not easy. I feel every word. I’m always worried I might cry.

“I’m going through a lot of things, for sure,” Alanis Obomsawin said.

Sitting in her small, wonderfull­y cluttered office in the depths of the National Film Board’s Montreal headquarte­rs on Côtede-Liesse Blvd., the 86-year-old Abenaki filmmaker attempted to put into words the feeling of rekindling her singing career, which never really was in the first place.

Obomsawin has made 51 documentar­ies over her 51-year tenure at the NFB. She is working on her 52nd. Two of her films — No Address (1988), shining a light on the struggles of Indigenous women coming to Montreal in the 1980s in search of opportunit­y, and Mother of Many Children (1977), exploring the place of women and mothers in Indigenous cultures — screen Thursday at Cinéma Moderne as part of POP Montreal’s Film POP component, followed by a Q&A with the director.

The next night, Obomsawin takes the stage of Monument National to perform her second

concert in the past year, and in the past 30 years, also as part of POP Montreal. The first was in Utrecht, the Netherland­s, where she sang her 1988 album Bush Lady in its entirety as part of Le Guess Who? festival last November.

The sequence of events leading to Obomsawin’s musical comeback began in this very office, a couple years back. NFB employee Fred Savard came across a vinyl copy of Bush Lady and, intrigued, asked Obomsawin if he could buy one.

“I said, ‘Buy one? I’ll give you one,’ ” Obomsawin recalled.

Soon Savard was dusting off and selling the remaining copies of her album to employees at the NFB. He passed one along to Radwan Ghazi Moumneh, coowner of Montreal’s fabled indie recording studio Hotel2Tang­o and guest programmer of last year’s Le Guess Who?, who loved the album and lured Obomsawin’s voice out of retirement.

“He wanted me to do a concert,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh my god. I’m 85 years old. I haven’t done a concert in years.’ I had a hard time, but I finally said yes.”

Months later, Obomsawin found herself standing before a

hall of 800 people cheering her on.

“When they all stood up, I thought I was going to pass out,” she said. “I was so touched. I just couldn’t imagine that they would like it so much.”

She has received many invitation­s since, agreeing only to the POP Montreal performanc­e, for the moment.

“It’s not an easy thing for me,” she said. “Not only am I saying to myself, ‘My god, have I got a voice?’ What I sing about is not easy. I feel every word. I’m always worried I might cry.”

Bush Lady is a beautiful, haunting album. Re-released this year by Montreal’s Constellat­ion Records (home to Godspeed You! Black Emperor), it features seven songs over 34 minutes, combining traditiona­l material with Obomsawin’s own compositio­ns.

The two-part title track finds her cooing, chirping and chanting, accompanie­d only by mournful violin and an insistent drumbeat. Mixing sarcasm and chilling faux-exuberance, she entreats the titular “bush lady” to come to the city.

“Hey bush lady / look at her / isn’t she beautiful? / Yeah! / She’s my lady / She’s all mine,” she intones in the 10-minute first part. “Bush lady, you want to make love?”

Then things get more serious. “Hey bush lady, you’ve got a big belly / Go home / Go back to your people.”

And, “Hey did you hear? / That bush lady / Well, she got a blond baby, you know.”

Decades later, faced with the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women, Obomsawin is saddened to see that her lyrics have lost little in the way of pertinence.

“I wrote that song in the ’60s, probably ’61 or ’62,” she said, “because of the way (Indigenous) women were treated. A lot of them on the street were being raped, beaten and killed. It was awful. Bush Lady is about … the innocence of these ladies who end up in very bad situations.

“The second part of Bush Lady is about after she dies. I want the bush lady to be respected, and for people to think twice before they think of us as terrible women. A lot of these women are so beautiful and they just don’t have a clue. They are made to feel all the worst parts about a human being.”

On Theo Pt. I and Pt. II, Obomsawin sings and speaks, in French, of her “tante Alanis” and her uncle Théophile Panadis, who told her of a massacre of the Abenakis in the fall of 1759, in which their village was attacked by the British while the men were off fighting alongside Montcalm.

In the early ’60s, before she was a filmmaker, Obomsawin toured schools, residentia­l schools and prisons across the country, singing and telling stories. She saw music — as she would later see cinema — as an inherently political tool.

“I was really revolting against the education system,” she said, “because the books they were using to teach the history of Canada were designed to make people hate us, as First Nations.”

Obomsawin had experience­d the effects of that hatred firsthand. As a child growing up on the Odanak reserve, she would get beaten up going to and from school in a neighbouri­ng town she prefers not to name.

“For me, going to school in those days was dangerous,” she said. “When you’re in it, you don’t understand what’s happening; but finally when I started to analyze this, how it’s designed, I started to fight back. I knew my history and I could sing, so this is what I used (my voice) for.”

She first came into contact with the NFB in the mid-’60s, while spearheadi­ng a campaign to build a swimming pool for the children on her reserve. She was later hired as a consultant by the NFB before being offered her own projects. Her film career eventually took off, leaving less and less space for singing.

Looking back, 51 years and 51 films later, Obomsawin has no regrets.

“I always sing, and I write,” she said. “That part is very sacred to me. But I’ve been busy making films and listening to other people, which I love also.”

And while her documentar­ies have kept her all too aware of the monumental challenges facing First Nations, she is heartened by positive changes she sees on various fronts.

“There are a lot of good things, especially in education and now in health services. We just have to make sure it continues. I think where we’re going, we’ve never been there before,” she said. “It’s exceptiona­l just to be part of it.”

That said, she doesn’t kid herself: “Women are still disappeari­ng and being badly treated. … It’s horrifying that this way of thinking on the part of the outside world is not totally gone.

“Sometimes I close my eyes, in the daytime, and I have visions of all the women walking together,” she said, her eyes moist. “They look so great. Even the ones that have died come back. It’s an incredible vision, so strong. I see them walking, and nobody’s ever going to abuse them again.”

They look so great. Even the ones that have died come back. It’s an incredible vision, so strong. I see them walking, and nobody’s ever going to abuse them again.

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 ?? JOHN MAHONEY ?? Alanis Obomsawin has re-released Bush Lady, her 1988 album combining traditiona­l music with her own compositio­ns.
JOHN MAHONEY Alanis Obomsawin has re-released Bush Lady, her 1988 album combining traditiona­l music with her own compositio­ns.
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 ?? JOHN MAHONEY ?? Alanis Obomsawin with a vintage family photo in her NFB office. In her youth, the singer came to see music, and later film, as an inherently political tool.
JOHN MAHONEY Alanis Obomsawin with a vintage family photo in her NFB office. In her youth, the singer came to see music, and later film, as an inherently political tool.

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