This time might finally be the right one for Daniel Monkman, the artist behind the Zoon project: Bekka Ma’iingan. His second album certainly places him among the favorites for the next Polaris Music Prize, two years after the nomination of his first, Bleached Waves. ” Yeah ! I hope it will work this time, ”laughs Monkman, who took advantage of the great confinement to better understand himself through this poignant post-pandemic work in which composer Owen Pallett and legendary Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo collaborated.
Daniel Monkman compares himself to a Nanabozo, a character from Anishinaabe mythology who has the ability to change his appearance: “I have often come across people I have known without them recognizing me”, he says , explaining that he himself went through trials that would transform anyone. “When I was addicted to drugs, I became very skinny, I had short hair. I got sober, let my hair grow out and started wearing glasses…”
This brings us to today’s Daniel, the one who reveals himself on Bekka Ma’iingan, the title refers to two distinct ideas: Bekka, to slow down, and Ma’iingan, for wolf, a reference to the clan to which his father belonged. And to reaffirm the link with the Anishinaabe culture, Monkman assumes today, through this album, his two-spirituality (” two spirits ”), a notion that can, but not necessarily, be equated with gender fluidity.
“It was those around me who encouraged me to show myself like this, but I am also aware that I have a platform, and therefore a responsibility. I feel a certain responsibility towards people like me, from Aboriginal communities,” says Daniel, adding that he was “raised by women, namely my mother and my aunt. I feel this feminine energy in me. The women in my life have protected me — from my father, in particular, who could become violent when he drank. »
At this point in our story, it is worth emphasizing one point: explaining the context of the creation of Bekka Ma’iingan allows you to grasp the depth, to clarify the themes of the songs – love, death a lot, that of his own father, a survivor of residential schools, which occurred at the start of the pandemic, and that of his friend Travis in March 2020, who is the song dedicated to Brave New World (Without You) -, but it is optional to the appreciation that one will have of the aforesaid album.
“Well at home and in my skin”
Daniel Monkman has a complicated background, but his music is crystal clear. Bekka Ma’iingan is a sumptuous album in which the artist strikes a balance between noisy experimentation and harmonic breath, between shoegaze guitars stuffed with effects and the purity of string orchestrations by Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy). Each song blends into the next, forming a mesmerizing listening experience. Let’s insist: on its face, this music is beautiful, with or without the story of the artist’s last years.
Daniel nods, “That’s exactly how I feel too.” I think I could have just launched the album, without explanation, and I think people would have understood everything by listening to the music. » Understood, too, that Bekka Ma’iingan is a precious album that communicates “this desire that I had, during confinement, to feel good at home and in my own skin. This downtime has given me a new perspective on who I am — for the first time, the world has slowed down, the majority of people have stayed home, with themselves. It was like a therapy that we all needed. »
We caught up with Daniel at his Toronto home; he was preparing his next concerts in Great Britain and Japan with a completely redesigned orchestra to reflect the new aesthetic turn taken on Bekka Ma’iingan : “ Bleached Waves was above all a guitar album, and that’s how I presented it in concert, explains the artist. This new one is more orchestral: less guitars, more strings and, on stage, there is also omnichord, all instruments that I use in a way that the public is not accustomed to. »
Concerts are also in preparation with his new friend Lee Ranaldo, met at the Montreal studio Hotel2Tango during the recording sessions for the Medicine Singers collective’s next album, led by guitarist Yonatan Gat. “I tried not to be too intense in front of him and to refrain from asking him all the questions that I had in mind”, says Daniel, a big fan of Sonic Youth.
During a break, Lee and Daniel were left alone in the studio talking. The two guitarists discovered that they had one thing in common: Winnipeg. Daniel grew up in Selkirk, about twenty kilometers north of the Manitoba capital; Ranaldo’s wife is from Winnipeg. “I told him about Bleached Waves and the “mocassingaze” that I had invented as a joke to talk about my shoegaze and pow-wow music. He said to me: send me your album, I want to listen to it! At the eleventh hour, Ranaldo recorded guitar tracks that embellish Zoon’s album. Together, they now plan to record a duet album.