Northern Haze still ‘the U2 of Nunavut’
IQALUIT, NUNAVUT— One had only to hear the mighty collective whoop of joy that went up from the crowd at Iqaluit’s Royal Canadian Legion hall when the members of Northern Haze walked in the door on Friday night to understand instantly how beloved this long-lived hard-rock combo from Igloolik is to the people of Nunavut.
As we watched the quintet engulfed by a swarm of giddy admirers proffering hugs and handshakes and snapping photos aplenty, a friend and fellow delegate to the inaugural Nunavut Music Week conference — for which Northern Haze delivered an uproarious set alongside beguiling Inuk folk-popster Riit and brawny “Arctic soul” combo the Trade-Offs on Friday — was moved to remark: “Well, I guess we know who the U2 of Nunavut is.”
He was kinda right. The guys of Northern Haze are conquering heroes in the North. They might as well be Nunavut’s U2, given the zealous reaction their sporadic gigs around the territory still get after 33 years in the game — although, truth be told, their sound hedges a lot closer to Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult or Boston than anything Bono’s ever been involved with. They’re bona fide rock stars at home, in any case, even if they’ve only rarely bothered to play outside the Nunavut borders. There were fans in the room on Friday who’d shouldered the considerable expense of flying in from such far-flung points as Rankin Inlet and Pangnirtung just for Northern Haze’s gig, and while the Legion was still hoppin’ for closers the Trade- Offs, the mass exodus to the coatcheck line once the Hazers had wrapped up their jubilantly chugging set served notice as to who were the evening’s main attraction.
“We don’t play very often, but when we do people come to places,” softspoken frontman and guitarist James Ungalaq said modestly the next afternoon. “We do it because we love to perform. We don’t make money. We’re living the dream. We’re broke but we’re still inspired.”
It hasn’t been easy keeping Northern Haze afloat this long.
Above and beyond the omnipresent logistical and financial hardships of travelling anywhere to play — or simply finding venues to play, for that matter — in Nunavut, the band was struck a double-blow by tragedy 10 years ago when it lost two of its founding members in the space of just five days when first bassist Elijah Kunnuck succumbed to cancer and then original lead singer, Kolatalik Inukshuk, was murdered.
Childhood friends Ungalaq, bassist Naisana Qamaniq and drummer John Inooya vowed not to let the music die along with their fallen bandmates, however. They immediately enlisted Ungalaq’s son, Derek Aqqiaruq, as a replacement guitarist and vocalist and, shortly thereafter, added young keyboardist Allan Kangok, Ungalaq’s nephew, to the mix.
The plan now, said Ungalaq, is to gradually hand off Northern Haze to a younger generation of players so that the band and its music will al- ways be around.
“We lost two prominent members of our band in five days,” said Ungalaq, 53. “We were up against this challenge and Derek is talented — he’s really good with the guitar — so that’s how we started connecting and getting the bigger picture of passing it on. We realized we had to do something. We couldn’t let this music die just because two of our members passed away.”
Aqqiaruq can certainly hold his own as a frontman and a guitar player with his father.
“It’s a pretty big challenge for me to fill my father’s shoes,” confessed Aqqiaruq. “I found that out when we went to a festival and I was taking his role as frontman and it was hard for me because people would ask why he wasn’t there with us and I had to explain to them. And another thing was I felt like I don’t get the same reaction from the crowds when he isn’t performing with us.”
Kangok, meanwhile, came into the fold after a group of his own had also just been torn apart by the murder of a bandmate.
“I’m speechless about it, always,” he says. “They helped me a lot.”
Despite the dire times in the past, Northern Haze is still a resolutely upbeat and anthemic force on stage — even when it’s singing about fallen friends and family — and has lost little of the punkish energy and heavy-metal crunch that must have startled the elders in Igloolik back in the day.