Noteworthy

The first time I heard Wolastoqiyik composer and singer Jeremy Dutcher perform was in early 2017, in a Toronto Consort concert called Kanatha/Canada, which disquietingly recontextualized the Sesquicentennial fervour setting in at the time. Dutcher’s contribution was unforgettable—three songs incorporating wax cylinder recordings he had found in the Museum of Canadian History in Gatineau, made in Wolastoq territory by ethnographer William H. Mechling in the early 1900s—one of the earliest field recordings of Wolastoqiyik music. The concert was one of the first public showings of pieces from Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa (Dutcher’s 2018 Polaris Prize–winning album). The recordings were scratchy and unclear, but for Dutcher they provided a unique glimpse into the musical lives of his ancestors. “How do I stay true to the melodies and give them the life that they deserve?” was the question he asked at the time.

One other thing caught my eye looking at that 2017 program: it started, the way the second half of the TSO’s Celebrate 100: A Gala Evening with Yo-Yo Ma concert would in November 2022, with George Paul’s Honour Song.

Jeremy Dutcher takes up the story:

There are so many stories behind every piece of music, right? For me, Honour Song goes way, way back, ever since I was a kid. I mean, it’s a Mi’kmaq song, and they are our neighbours. We’re the Wolastoqiyik, the people of the Wolastoq [Saint John] River. But for me, to be honest, I never even realized it wasn’t our song, because the way I first heard it, it was already in our language—translated into Wolastoqey in the 1980s. My own grandmother was part of that translation team.

So it’s a song that has always been in my constellation. It’s kind of anthemic—it grips you and it stays with you. I was born in 1990, the year of the Oka Crisis, and some of my earliest memories are of what was going on with Donald Marshall and the DFO [Department of Fisheries and Oceans] over fishing rights in Mi’kmaq territory. So going to protests and being involved in celebrations when our rights were affirmed in the courts, I was hearing that song all the time, lifting us up as we gathered. Not just the Mi’kmaq coming together, or the Wolastoq coming together—it was when we all came together. That’s why I say anthemic.

But I really started to learn and hear it through Maggie Paul. She’s a Maliseet elder, teacher, and song carrier from the East. She kept a lodge in her backyard back in the day—brought a lot of people there, taught, and shared songs. She’s fostered a whole generation. So I first heard it in her lodge as a child, and to hear her sing that song in our language was so beautiful. It was in my teenage years, maybe even my college days, before I heard George Paul singing it in Mi’kmawi’simk, and that was like—wow! My story with the song is that it’s been ever-growing and evolving. I tried to learn it in both languages because at the time I was living in Halifax, in Mi’kmaq territory, and I thought, “Well, I can’t just be singing this song in Wolastoqey—I’m gonna get something thrown at me!” Even to this day, when I’m singing one verse in one language, I’ll switch to the other for the next.

Halifax was where you went to music school?

Yes. So at the same time I was starting to sing it in both languages, I was sitting down at the piano and trying to find a harmonic language that made sense for me. It’s been harmonized and contextualized by lots of other people. But for me, there were other chords that I was hearing, so I thought, “Can I bring my harmonics into it?” Actually, I put it out as a bit of a dance track you can find on Spotify or YouTube. It’s got a beat to it, and I love doing it that way. But also, I could hear a lot of orchestral underpinning I wanted to marry, to weave together—two disparate aesthetics which, when they’re put in conversation with each other, show the power that lives underneath it all. So contextualizing it for orchestra has been building for me. And then when Yo-Yo came on board, that just took it in a whole different direction.

And how did that happen?

Oh my gosh, how does any of this happen? This was just after the Polaris Prize and I was touring and stopped in Toronto, doing some photoshoots—a very busy time. But you know, when a phone call comes in from Yo-Yo Ma Incorporated, you take the call and change your flights and figure it out! He was on a world tour, doing this Bach project, the complete cello suites. Wherever he went, he would ask local musicians to come in and be the encore after the suites—a real improvised collaboration with a local artist. He was doing a concert in Montreal at Maison symphonique, and asked if I wanted to come to Montreal and be that guest artist.

So you say, “Just give me a sec while I see if there’s room on my calendar”?

And truly, there wasn’t! [laughs] But I made room. It was just such a deep honour to be asked, and even more, to be asked, “What makes sense? What do you want to share?” And I thought, yes, this song is appropriate for this moment and this time; it’s about bringing our gifts to each other and honouring who we each are. And Yo-Yo is such an ambassador for humanity. It’s not just about playing beautiful music—although it is that. It’s about, “What can that music do? And what kind of social impact can that have?”

So we shared that beautiful moment on stage in Montreal for the first time, and then came Notes for the Future, which was the album he just put out this past year, consisting of a selection of those collaborations throughout that Bach cello tour. I was just finishing a tour in the States and was asked to come to a small recording studio in the Berkshires. We had this funky arrangement going that was just so cool. I had my shaker there, he had his cello—the collaborative spirit was just so present, open to whatever the moment brought.

And now you get to reprise it with an orchestra.

Yes! Getting to tell a broader and broader story all the time, and the song seems to be gathering wonderful moss as it rolls down the proverbial hill!

Mostly, I’m just excited that people get to hear this song and its message, and get to understand that our Indigenous languages and our melodies are really beautiful—and they deserve and belong in really high places. We have spaces like concert halls built to honour music. And yes, they do. But let’s incorporate all kinds of different musical ways. And I think now we’re at a moment where institutions and places are picking up seriously on this—how we get different kinds of voices in the door that haven’t been.

So, which language are you going to sing in?

Bilingual. Here’s my big chance! I think I’m gonna start in Mi’kmawi’simk to give a tip of the hat to the original language of the song and then probably do the second verse in Wolastoqey, my mom’s language—the one I heard first, and the one that feels best in my mouth. But you have to pay homage to where things come from: to honour Maggie Paul, whom I learned the song from and who put me on my path, and to honour George, who was the originator of the song.

So, how do you hope the audience will receive it? It’s not just an encore piece this time.

It’s a large question. In an oral tradition, songs are passed down for reasons other than public performance, and even the idea of “a song” means something different. I hope that people receive it in a way of, “Oh, I’ve never heard that before”—as something new that puzzles their ears. There’s a reason why most people don’t recognize the sounds of these languages: it’s because these languages have been removed from this place. And so what I hope to do with my work, in any space I enter, is to put our language forward and say, “This belongs in this space.” I’m not trying to burn down the concert hall. I believe in these spaces, in the beauty of these ways, too. But to lift our way up and say, “Isn’t this beautiful?”

And when we can put both ways in dialogue with each other—wow, all the better, all the better.

The interview was conducted and transcribed by David Perlman, a Toronto-based writer and the longtime editor of WholeNote Magazine. Born in Johannesburg, he has lived in Toronto’s downtown west since 1975.