Why did Claude Mckenzie take so many years to record a new album? “Why did it take so many years?” he repeats slowly, as if the question had a profound metaphysical tenor. “Let’s just say I’m not the guy who’s going to run after the producers. »
Posted yesterday at 9:00 a.m.
Outside in front of the Nouvelle Maison de Radio-Canada, Claude Mckenzie, his hood pulled up over his head, a philosopher. “Popularity, I save myself from that. Far be it from me to seek the glory of men, which rots after a month or two,” thinks the man who was in Montreal this week to attend Wednesday’s Premier Gala de l’ADISQ – he was quoted in the category of Album of the Year – Indigenous Languages – and to present a performance at Sunday’s ceremony.
In terms of this objective – to save himself from popularity – Claude Mckenzie’s career, since the end of Kashtin in the mid-1990s, has been an undeniable success. Muk(u)uin, his fourth solo album, released at the end of February 2022, will have generated little media coverage. At 55, the Innu songwriter leads a nomadic life and is sometimes impossible to reach, because he does not always have a cell phone.
But what has he occupied the 13 years that separate Muk(u)uin ofInniu, his previous album released in 2009? “I strolled, man ! Ostie that I strolled. But I miss the music”, confides the one who has nevertheless never stopped playing and whom you could have come across in recent years on the stage of a tavern in Thunder Bay or James Bay, “with musicians quite a bit worse than those on [son] disc”.
I miss music, because it’s the only thing I know how to do, probably the only thing I’m going to do for the rest of my life, even if I have my sins and my demons, as they say.
Claude McKenzie
In addition to his love of strolling, Claude Mckenzie’s career suffered greatly from the crimes that brought him to court: in May 1994, he was convicted of impaired driving causing bodily harm, in 2006, sentenced to 30 days in prison for threats and assault, then in 2013, 45 days in prison for simple assault on his spouse at the time. Events all having in common alcohol, his worst muse. “It’s not just regrets that I have. I would say more than it is remorse, ”he drops laconically, looking down.
“I know that he is still very affected by that today,” explains director Simon Walls, a 37-year-old non-native who met him on the North Shore, when the mobile studio of Musique nomade was set up. was there for a few weeks. “When we arrive in the communities, we adopt a philosophy of non-judgment with the people we work with, because we are faced with a completely different reality. »
Raw talent behind the mic
Spread over more than a year, in Montreal, the recording sessions of Muk(u)uin will have strongly solicited the patience of Simon Walls, Claude Mckenzie being a free being, who can go for a walk for 15 minutes and only reappear the next day.
But Claude is a raw talent behind the microphone. His first influence as a melodist is John Lennon, and you can hear it right away. He can take a guit and lay something magical on you anytime.
Simon Walls
It was important to Walls to invite young artists from Maliotenam, where Claude Mckenzie grew up, to sing on Tipatshimun, cover of a success of Kashtin. “In the studio, Kanen, Matiu and Dan-Georges Mckenzie were freaking out,” he recalls. They all remembered dancing to it in parties of basement. We know that Kashtin was popular, but the impact they had in the communities is hard to describe, it’s so big. »
PHOTO ANDRÉ PICHETTE, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Claude McKenzie in 2004
Claude Mckenzie himself seems uncomfortable when people talk about the success of his duo, still unequaled for Aboriginal artists in Quebec, who gave his heirs permission to dream. In 1990, Kashtin won no less than three Félix awards, including Best-Selling Album.
Sometimes, young musicians say to me: “I follow in your footsteps, I follow your path.” And I always tell them, ‘I don’t want you to follow me. Come, walk beside me.”
Claude McKenzie
The veteran intended to spend his time in town visiting his 17-year-old daughter — he also has a 31-year-old son and an 8-year-old daughter. He may enter a church if he comes across one, faith being at the heart of his life. His noggin is already full of new melodies, which he records nowhere else but in his memory and which he is not at all afraid of forgetting.
What future does Claude Mckenzie aspire to? “I dream of continuing to live for a very long time. »
ADISQ “believes in rehabilitation”
By email, Ève Paré, director general of ADISQ, explains that she chose to present a performance by Claude Mckenzie on Sunday, despite his criminal record, after having sought advice from an advisory committee. ADISQ took into consideration that the facts go back ten years, that the artist has served his sentence, that it believes in rehabilitation and that this performance “is part of the launch of the decade indigenous languages and reflects [la] desire, since 2019, to offer a platform for their music to shine”.