New record label crucial infrastructure for Nunavut music: founder

IQALUIT, Nunavut – After two albums and successful tours as far afield as Australia, Nunavut-based musician Andrew Morrison felt he and his band the Jerry Cans had earned the right to be taken on their own terms.

The music industry felt differently.

“People are interested in the music but because it’s not sung in English, there’s a lot of hesitation in the music industry world to work with that,” said Morrison. “We just weren’t willing to take that any more.”

So they started Aakuluk Music, Iqaluit’s first record label, devoted to recording, assisting and promoting pop music of all kinds sung in Inuktitut.

Its first release, on Nov. 4, will be from the Jerry Cans, with the band’s usual blend of folk, rock, celtic, reggae and throat singing that Southern Canada has sampled on the folk festival circuit. And the nascent label, formed this fall, is already working with three other Nunavut-based acts.

Even in a time of file-sharing and streaming, a local label is an essential piece of music industry infrastructure, said Morrison.

“We call it a label, but it’s much more of a music organization,” he said. “We’re helping the artists book shows and manage their music and help them write grants and record and help them network.”

When it costs $2,000 to fly to the nearest southern city, like-minded locals have no choice but to work together.

“There’s so many talented musicians in this territory and talented artists and something that’s a bit more lacking is the industry side of it. We wanted to create a space to built on the Nunavut music industry.”

It’s not as if the music isn’t there.

It starts with the deep traditions of throat-singing and drum-dancing. Layered on to that are the accordion and fiddle tunes introduced by Scottish whalers that have been filling dance floors across the territory since the nineteenth century.

Then there are generations worth of Nunavut singers and songwriters that have performed in Inuktitut, starting with Charlie Panigoniak, continuing through Susan Aglukark and on to Tanya Tagaq. Some are unknown in the South, like the band Northern Haze, which performed in the ’70s with songs describing the move from the old life on the land to the new one in towns.

Homegrown tunes were a big deal, said Nancy Mike, the Jerry Cans’ vocalist and throat singer.

“It was in our own language and we could understand what they were saying. It was very powerful for me.”

One of Aakuluk’s future projects will be to dust off, restore and reissue some of those old recordings, said Morrison.

The world is finally ready to listen, he believes.

“We toured Australia and New Zealand and we’re playing songs by some of those guys, some of the old artists. We tell them, ‘We sang your song for 3,000 Australians and they’re like, ‘What the hell?'”

And it seems to work. One Jerry Cans tune, about the deliciousness of eating seal, has a sing-along chorus.

“We’ve had thousands of people screaming Inuktitut words back at us,” Morrison said. “People are willing to learn and willing to engage with that.”

There’s still a long way to go. The territory has no real recording studio and no real performance hall.

Internet connections are so poor the Jerry Cans can’t even download their own music video.

But it’s a start, Morrison said.

“There’s such a cool music scene in Nunavut.”

— By Bob Weber in Edmonton. Follow him on Twitter at @row1960