On the sober cover of his exhilarating second album entitled Motewolonuwok there is a symbol, reproduced twice, underlines the author, composer, tenor and ethnomusicologist Jeremy Dutcher. Before his ancestors from the Maliseet nation (Wolastoqiyik) wrote their own grammar, they inscribed themselves, in memory and stone, by engraving images like this one, which means “spiritual being”. “There are two on the cover to signify two-spiritedness,” specifies the queer musician who identifies as “ two-spirit “. “The whole album is about duality” sung in two languages, questioning the past and future of indigenous cultures.
Let us first underline this obvious fact, which will jump to the ears of any music lover devoting a few minutes of their precious time to listening Motewolonuwok : these songs are absolutely beautiful. The voice of the tenor, trained at Dalhousie University, the suave string orchestrations by Owen Pallett, the choirs recorded in a church in Kingston, Ontario. Songs of admirable clarity to which Dutcher has injected a touch of jazz. It can be listened to like a great record by Nat King Cole or Tony Bennet, like Rufus Wainwright, like Elliot Smith.
Certainly, Dutcher’s speech is complex, his own quest for identity is, but these songs are anything but airtight. Here, Jeremy Dutcher extends his hand: “For me, it’s a question of accessibility,” he comments. It’s not that I don’t want to take musical risks or that I don’t progress as a musician. But if making avant-garde music prevents me from communicating with the public… I want to be understood, I want to address people in a way that makes them feel GOOD. »
I want to be understood, I want to address people in a way that makes them feel good
Certain texts, those of Ancestors Too Young And The Land That Held Them, notably, heard during the second half (sung in English) of the album, “address complex and traumatic subjects. Doing it nicely is important, it balances the proposition,” says Dutcher.
On Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, his rich but demanding first album, the musicologist forged links between the Maliseet musical tradition and contemporary music. While the listener was ultimately rewarded by the beauty of Dutcher’s singing, the artist was rewarded for his work with the Polaris Music Prize (as well as a Juno) the following year.
“On this first album, even if the public did not understand my lyrics [écrits en wolastoq], they showed interest in the proposal. I said to myself: now that I have brought all these people together around my project, what do I have to say to them? »
A lot, it turns out. Like what modern life is like for members of the First Nations, what fights are they waging for the survival of their language, their culture, their rights. But we still need to understand it, “so I told myself that I should address them in English. So, this album is, in this sense, very personal, because I would like my whole life to take place in Wolastoq, but I must recognize that it takes place mainly in English,” explains the musician, established in Montreal since the start of the pandemic and who imagines one day singing in French.
“I have so many stories to tell, I just hope that the public understands me,” he continues, admitting to feeling nervous on the eve of the release of this album “on which I worked with elements that I had never used it before. I feel more vulnerable singing for the first time in English and putting my voice to such beautiful orchestrations, for choir and violins. »
Essential is invisible…
The title of the album, it is specified in the press release, means: “people who work with what can be heard, but not seen. Magicians. Witches. » Musicians, too, we point out to him. ” Absolutely ! » he thunders on the line, with a smile in his voice, from his hotel room in Paris, where he was finishing a promotional tour.
“Magicians, people who accomplish something indescribable. All of that, for me, is also music. I felt it today, in an interview with RFI radio. I was in the studio with a translator who repeated in French word for word everything I said in English. That, too, is magic — we find it in more things than we imagine. It’s in everyday life and that’s a bit of the spirit of the album: exploring this magic, and also understanding that those we treat as wizards or witches have often been part of of communities that we have sought to stigmatize. The women. Queers. People of color. I get this word back, sorcerer, Motewolonuwok, to purge it of its negative connotation. »
I recover this word, sorcerer, Motewolonuwok, to purge it of its negative connotation
On the first song of the album, we hear the distant voice of a man from his community giving his definition of Motewolonuwok. “It’s a way of building a bridge with my first record, since it is an archive document that I found during my research to help me with the composition. We hear him talk about these magical people, we hear him say that we must respect them, because they have a force inside them. I thought it set the table well for the rest of the album” on which Dutcher sings in English the words of Qwo-Li Driskill, Cherokee poet and associate professor at Oregon State University.
“He also identifies himself as two-spirit, specifies Jeremy. He wrote poems that really inspired me, talking about magical people and queer people. When I read his poems, I understood that they were totally in tune with what I was trying to say on my album. Even though they weren’t my own words, I felt like I had to sing them. »