Mathieu McKenzie and his father, Florent Vollant, producers of the Makusham studio in Maliotenam, hope to get the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to impose quotas for indigenous music on public and private radio stations in the country.
The duo has already requested a meeting with CRTC representatives on this subject. “We want to go meet them and submit our brief. We want to ask them to give us a place, a certain percentage of Aboriginal music on the radios,” says Mathieu McKenzie.
It does not specify the percentage of native music they might require: [Environ] 5% native music would be fine. Anglophones and Francophones are also fighting for their quotas,” he says, adding that it could be “Indigenous creators” who also sing in English or French.
Banned from the airwaves after the Oka crisis
Quoting his father, musician Florent Vollant, Mathieu McKenzie says even Indigenous music scheduled “between one and four in the morning” would be an advancement. Florent Vollant is also familiar with the difficulty of making Aboriginal music heard on the radio, since his works were boycotted on the air after the Oka crisis. “We don’t mind, but we want a place. We have production quality and we deserve a place”, he said, adding that it is a “political battle”, “which is not won”.
The Makusham studio itself does not only produce native creators. “We have been working for the rapprochement for twenty years. The rest of us are open. The door is always open to everyone. We work with those who love music, who create and who want to develop,” says Mathieu McKenzie.
While the Festival international de la chanson de Granby (FICG) recently excluded rapper Samian because of his production in Anishinabémowin, for its part, the Francouvertes festival announced this fall that its competition was now open to Indigenous musicians. This is how singer Frederick Cluney and his group NINAN were selected from 200 candidates and they will sing 100% in Innu. NINAN’s first album, Innu Auassreleased this summer, was recorded at Studio Makusham.
The organization of the Francouvertes, which will take place in Montreal from March 14 to May 16, has been thinking for some time about how to integrate Aboriginal artists into its programming. “The problem was that the native artists sang either in their language or in English. Very few sing in French”, explains the director of the Francouvertes, Sylvie Courtemanche. After integrating a standout Aboriginal component last year, titled Skatne (which means unifier in the Mohawk language), the festival changed this fall the rules requiring 50% French to be able to welcome Aboriginal artists in the competition. However, these artists will not be able to sing in English.
Languages also under threat
“We thought we were there, continues Mme Courtemanche. Indigenous languages are also under threat. And we didn’t feel that hearing Aboriginal languages constituted a threat in the space we want to create for Francophone song. »
For her part, the Grand Chief of the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation Tribal Council, Savanna McGregor, wrote a letter to the director of the FICG, Éric-Louis Champagne, to express her “astonishment” and her “dismay” at her decision to exclude Samian from the festival, and demand an apology. For her, this decision “illogical and senseless is considered an insult to the Algonquin Nation that I represent,” she wrote. Need I remind you that Aboriginal languages flourished throughout Quebec long before a single French word was spoken there? “.
We thought we were there. Indigenous languages are also under threat. And we didn’t feel that hearing Aboriginal languages constituted a threat in the space we want to create for Francophone song.
“These primary languages were banished, denigrated, in favor of the languages of the French and English invaders in a context of forced assimilation. Today, she continues, “Anishinabemowin is certainly not a threat to the preservation of French, but the opposite is true, as our four centuries of living together have demonstrated.”