From the website: Playwright and novelist Tomson Highway is one of Canada's most important storytellers. His ground-breaking plays have put Aboriginal stories on the international stage. He's won numerous awards for his multifaceted works. And he was the first Aboriginal writer to be named to the Order of Canada.
Now, at age 62, Highway has produced a beautiful recording of songs. His album,
The (Post) Mistress, showcase songs from the one-woman play of the same name. He joins Jian to discuss his journey thus far, and why he decided it was time for a soundtrack.
By Gregory Adams, December 2014; Huffington Post
An article on Native North America 1: Aboriginal Folk Rock. The article tells the stories of several musicians involved with the project, a collection of music from First Nations, Inuit and Metis artists.
December 2014; CBC News
An article that overviews Native North America 1: Aboriginal Folk Rock and the artists behind the project.
From the article, "A new two CD collection called Native North America Vol. 1 is drawing a lot of attention to the obscure recordings of indigenous artists from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, from across Canada and the northern United States."
By Patrick Langston, March 20, 2012; Ottawa Citizen.
From the article: "There’s a nominee who’s a straight-up country musician. There’s a bluesman. And a duo that blends traditional powwow music with decidedly non-First Nations house music.
So what exactly makes an act eligible for the Junos’ Aboriginal Recording of the Year category?
And considering the history of native peoples in Canada, is having such a category perpetuating apartness? “It’s not a racial category, it’s a musical category,” says Brian Wright-McLeod, a Dakota-Anishnabe and chair of the Junos’ aboriginal category. Eligible styles include all traditional forms, hand drums and traditional flutes, Inuit throat singing, and Métis and other fiddling. Also eligible are fusions of all genres of contemporary music that incorporate the eligible styles and/or reflect the aboriginal experience in Canada through words or music."
CBC Music Blog.
From the website: We enlisted the help of Winnipeg radio personality
Melissa Spence to give us the lowdown on 2013's best albums from Aboriginal artists.
From the website: Singer Jeremy Dutcher's voice is an instrument that's reaching across a century of Indigenous history.
The 27-year-old operatic tenor's debut album marks an exercise in duality, as the trained musician combines his interest in classical and electronic music with a stunning array of archival recordings he found in a dusty Quebec archive.
"Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa" is an ambitious 11-track project that weaves the past and present together in hopes of drawing attention to the fading Wolastoq language. It's spoken in the Tobique First Nation, one of six Wolastoqiyik reserves in New Brunswick where Dutcher spent much of his youth.
