Folk singer-songwriter Philippe McKenzie, a leading figure in Innu music, died Friday at the age of 70.
He “had the courage and intelligence to sing and address colonization and dispossession head on,” the Innu Takuaikan Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam band council wrote on social media Friday. “Philippe McKenzie is the foundation on which the works and careers of the hundreds of Innu artists who followed him were built,” it added.
Born in 1953 in Mani-utenam, an Innu community on the outskirts of Sept-Îles, Philippe Mckenzie released three albums in the 1970s: Indian Songs in Folk Rock Tradition, Innu And Montagnais folk groupAs part of the latter, he notably collaborated with the singer and musician Florent Vollant, with whom he founded the Innu Nikamu indigenous music festival, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.
McKenzie distinguished himself in the 1970s and 1980s by fusing traditional sounds with the popular folk sound of the time. A practice he later abandoned, he explained in a 2010 interview with anthropologist Véronique Audet: “The teueikan [tambour] is sacred and alive. I used it myself, only to make a beat in my music, and I wasn’t able to use it properly, like the old guys did. So I stopped using it in my music.”
The first artist to record a disc in the Innu language, “his pioneering work has greatly influenced indigenous musicians to this day,” explains the anthropologist in his doctoral thesis at the University of Montreal. Over the years, the singer has performed on numerous stages in Quebec, but also in France and Switzerland.
Since the announcement of his death, social media has been overflowing with tributes to the singer. “You opened our ears and our souls and made us hear the true ‘language of our land’!” wrote Caroline Bergeron. “A great loss for all Indigenous people and for all of Quebec,” said Yves Claudé, who praised a “pioneer of the new Innu song.”
” I love nightsheuakan “, reacted the singer Florent Vollant, Friday evening. “Goodbye, my friend.”