Beatrice Deer grew up in Quaqtaq, Nunavik, one of the northernmost villages in the province. That little point of land and ice that rolls up where the Hudson Strait and Ungava Bay meet, to the right of the Quebec cap on a map? It’s here. “What do I miss the most about my village?” Slowness, responds the Innu indie folk-rock artist. Here in Montreal, if I want to see a friend, I have to tie up my baby in the car and spend 25 minutes in traffic. Everything is planned according to the traffic. In Quaqtaq, I only have to walk a few minutes to go have tea with my old aunt… ”
SHIFTING, his sixth album in more than 15 years of career, is not slow. The electric guitars, the distorted bass, the tight rhythm, these songs rise like the winter wind, contrasting with the folk and acoustic country atmospheres of the very beautiful and tender My All to You which she had published three years ago on behalf of an author.
“I compose my songs on my own, with my guitar and my simple chords,” she explains. I record my voice in my iPhone, then send the file to the band’s musicians, ”Mark“ Bucky ”Wheaton, drummer, and Christopher McCarron, guitarist, directors of the new record. “They were the ones who made the arrangements, but I told them I wanted something energetic, lively, songs that I could dance to singing on stage. Something free, like a celebration. “
The extra time offered by the pandemic and its confinements allowed the duo to work at length on these songs to give relief to the orchestrations, relief enhanced by the touch of Jace Lacek (The Besnard Lakes) in the mix. “They have all the latitude to do whatever they want with the songs. That’s the most interesting thing about the collaboration, especially since the project may bear my name, we form a group together ”which did well to plug in the amps for these new songs.
In the Inuktitut language, Beatrice tells us the legends of her people who she misses after almost two years of a pandemic. Family and friends are still in Quaqtaq, and her work is all over the North, since when she is not singing, Beatrice Deer produces and directs TV shows within the production company Taqramiut Nipingat – “The voice du Nord ”- which has offices in Dorval and Salluit (the second northernmost village in Quebec, after Ivujivik!).
However, something else has changed for Beatrice since the release of her previous album. We can see it in his recent photos: a tunniit. This thin vertical line tattooed on the chin traditionally worn by Inuit women. A spiritual sign, explains Beatrice Deer, since in Inuit beliefs, the spirit brings with it these tattoos in “the life after”, so that the ancestors can recognize them when they arrive.
More intimately, his tattoo “signifies that I am Innu.” That I decolonize myself. May I regain my identity, since we must regain the identity that was stolen from us during colonization. I don’t really talk about all of this in my songs, but you can hear throat singing there, which is also a way of decolonizing us ”. The missionaries sent to the North, recalls the musician, prohibited throat singing because they considered the ritual “satanic, when it was only a game, between women”.
So this splendid SHIFTING bringing together melodious and catchy indie rock songs performed in Inuktitut, English and French looks both north and the future. Beatrice Deer sings about “the way fate calls you to take. I know, it’s cliché to say that, but life is a journey ”during which, says Beatrice, we have to learn to detach ourselves from what takes us out of our way. “It’s sort of a record on growth, on the meaning we find in life, with its ups and downs. On the need to put an end to suffering and seek healing. “
And take its rightful place. Her place as a musician who, after five self-produced albums, now publishes SHIFTING on the Musique nomade label, which won the Lucien producer of the year at the GAMIQ gala last week. Her place as an Inuit and a member of the First Nations, since her name, Deer, comes from her father: “My father grew up in a biracial home, my grandmother was from Quebec and my grandfather, Mohawk. Unfortunately, my father was colonized because he attended residential schools. At the time, they were prohibited from speaking the Mohawk language. After marrying my mother over forty years ago, he moved there to Quaqtaq, where he still lives. “
“I think non-natives are starting to understand the hard truth about cultural genocide [des peuples du Nord et des Premières Nations] and the extreme injustice we have suffered, continues Beatrice Deer. We’ve wanted to talk about it for decades. Finally, it seems that we are starting to listen to us. All the same, I have the feeling that the last to understand will be the governments themselves. “