Nunavut musicians earning exposure
INancy Mike and Andrew Morrison look remarkably calm for a couple a mere 24 hours away from launching a music conference for the first time in the unlikely locale of the Canadian Arctic, but “casual” is the way they do things up here in Nunavut.
The inaugural Nunavut Music Week only kicked off on Thursday afternoon, but all signs point toward it being a thoroughly chilled-out affair, despite the fact that its affable organizers freely admit they’re kind of making the whole thing up as they go along. Perhaps keeping it loose is the best practice when taking on a task as daunting as starting a music festival and industry conference in Iqaluit (population 7,000). You’ve heard of “island time”? Well, there’s such a thing as Baffin Island time.
“I find, in Nunavut especially, if you schedule too much, with time things will go wrong,” says a smiling Mike, who co-fronts robust Iqaluit folk-rock quintet the Jerry Cans with her longtime partner, Morrison.
“So it’s always good to let things go as they go along throughout the day.”
“It’s kind of chaotic,” says Morrison, laughing. “We’ve dealt with lots of crazier things in our lives. That’s what I always remind myself.”
All kidding aside, the Jerry Cans and their Arctic-focused Aakuluk Music label are actively making Canadian music history in Iqaluit this weekend.
Now that they’re finally enjoying some international success — the Cans rushed back from a gig in Hamburg earlier this week — the band are determined to share the lessons they’ve learned and the industry relationships they’ve built with their contemporaries in the far-flung Nunavut music scene. How? By bringing the Canadian music industry to them for a change, instead of heading south like they usually do.
Nunavut Music Week will parade some of the territory’s best and brightest talent before a host of industry folk and journalists flying to Iqaluit for a weekend of shows, parties and panels (one of which this writer will participate in on Saturday).
Interest in the modest event runs beyond the Canadian border. Writers from Rolling Stone and the New York Times are en route, lured in part by the promise of seeing acclaimed Inuk avant-gardist Tanya Tagaq playing a show in her home territory on Saturday night.
Beyond that, the event will showcase the talents of the Jerry Cans themselves, but also rising Pangnirtung popster Riit, Igloolik psych legends Northern Haze, bluesy rockers the Trade Offs and about a half-dozen other acts.
The low-key nature of Nunavut Music Week was illustrated by the small gathering held for early-arriving musicians and delegates at the house of the brother of Jerry Cans member Brendan “Dotes” Doherty, atop a rocky ridge overlooking Frobisher Bay on Wednesday evening.
The Cans served scrumptious “country food” — smoked Arctic char and frozen narwhal flesh — and made pizza for their guests while small children ran amok.
Tagaq, arguably the closest thing Nunavut has to a “celebrity” at the moment, napped quietly next to a pellet stove, her sealskin boots protruding from beneath a blanket.
Since one of Iqaluit’s three hotels closed down just a few weeks prior to the conference, several of the attendees (this one included) are staying in private residences that have stepped in to offset the shortfall in accommodations.
Meanwhile, Morrison was hoping to reach fiddler Gustin Adjun (“the best young fiddler in Nunavut”) by radio, wherever he’d been camped out on the tundra, “to tell him that Nunavut Music Week is happening” and lure him to Iqaluit to play.
“What we wanted to do was allow people from down south in the industry to come to Nunavut and see how things are done up here,” says Morrison, who has lived in Iqaluit since he was a kid and learned the Inuktitut language on a promise to Mike’s father when he asked to marry her.
“It would have been so much easi- er, logistically and financially, for all of us to go to someplace like Toronto and do some sort of industry event there,” Morrison says. “But we really wanted to flip that on its head and allow people to get a glimpse of life in the North.
“For the northerners to see that their music is of interest to people across Canada and across the world, that’s super-inspirational for some 20-year-old kid from a town of 500 people. That’s very hard to conceptualize sometimes. And for anyone from the south, no matter how many interviews we do, we’ll never be able to explain showing up at the airport and feeling the cold wind on your cheeks and the hospitality the minute you arrive in this town. It’s impossible. People are so welcoming.
“Those are all just tiny parts of what we think is the most beautiful place in the world.”
For Mike, Nunavut Music Week is all about showing her fellow Inuit musicians it is indeed possible for artists who dare to dream of sharing their songs and their stories — and the Inuktitut language — with listeners outside the Arctic, and to find success without having to leave home forever.
As she puts it succinctly, “I just want these young, amazing artists to realize that anything is possible for them.”
“For the northerners to see that their music is of interest to people across Canada and across the world, that’s super-inspirational.” ANDREW MORRISON JERRY CANS CO-FRONT