Jeremy Dutcher, a classically-trained tenor, pianist and composer, took the Canadian music scene by storm when his first album launched five years ago. Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa won both the Polaris Prize and a Juno.
For it, he built new music upon hundred-year-old recordings of his community’s traditional songs. It was a gift for his people, he says. It proved to be a gift to many others as well. His music, combined with thoughtful commentary on Indigenous language and culture, flair for thought-provoking fashion, and dramatic stage presence, has made Dutcher a highly sought-after performer across the globe.
His second album, Motewolonuwok, came out eight months ago, again to praise and applause. It was nominated for a Juno and is currently on the Polaris Prize long list.
It begs the question: what’s next for the 33-year-old musician?
The answer: Dance music!
“I’m thinking a lot about dance right now,” says the ebullient Dutcher, from his parents’ home in Fredericton, New Brunswick. “I don’t know if that’s a disco album or four-on-the-floor … or if it’s dance more in a broader sense.”
Since rocketing onto the scene in 2018, Dutcher has made headlines for his deeply thoughtful work using music to help energize Indigenous reconciliation and language resurgence in Canada.
For his first album, he took archived wax cylinder recordings made of members of his Wolastoqiyik community – the people of Neqotkuk First Nation in New Brunswick – singing traditional songs, and built new songs on them, all in their Wolastoqey language.
Using both classical instruments and electronic touches, it had a completely new sound, described by the NPR as a “neo-operatic ancestral collaboration.” And people went crazy for it. Dutcher has been featured on an NPR Tiny Desk Concert, and by the CBC, the Walrus, the Globe and Mail and Vogue, to name a few. His shows usually sell out.
For his second album, Motewolonuwok, he included English for the first time.
“There is that element of wanting to speak to more people, for sure,” he says, a piano visible in the background as he talks. “I think also it was trying to speak to me, too. It was a much more introspective and personal work.”
“This second record was way more ambitious. We had a choir, we had an orchestra … I’m just trying to honour that building of a record as a communal space. Because I’m singing songs that are really connected to where I come from in my language. There’s a responsibility to share those songs in the best way you know how.”
His mission is what drives him, he says.
“I have a very clear sense of why I’m doing what I’m doing and it comes down to language and culture,” he says.
“My goal is in the work that I’m doing is to create 10 more of me, to get rid of my job so I don’t have to do it, so there are so many young Indigenous people in this country singing in their language and honouring those who came before.”
Dutcher says he doesn’t have a timeline in mind but that he’s indeed already working on songs for his third record, the ‘dance in some form’ album.
“I’m exploring what that’s going to look like and always taking our traditional songs and forms and language and trying to infuse it in everything I do,” he says. “I’m not sure where we’re going, going forward, but we’re dancing forward, that’s what I know.”
Jeremy Dutcher performs August 4 at the Canmore Folk Festival. Details and tickets here.
“Skicinuwihkuk” from Motewolonuwok:
