Understanding land, identity, and reconciliation through song

The first ever ArtsEverywhere Festival was held in Guelph on Jan. 19 to 22. Events ranged from conferences, to concerts, to lectures, to artistic performances.

On Jan. 20, northern Ontario group Midnight Shine performed as part of the Guelph Lecture “On Being Canadian.”

Midnight Shine is a four-piece rock-roots band from the James Bay Region. The band consists of Adrian Sutherland on lead vocals and guitar, George Gillies on drums and vocals, Stan Louttit on bass and vocals, and Zach Tomatuk on guitar and vocals.

The Ontarion sat down with Sutherland before the band’s performance to talk about life in the far north.

Midnight Shine was formed in 2011 when Sutherland was asked to open for Canadian rock group Trooper in Timmins under one condition: he needed to have a band.

“One thing we did know right away when we first played was that it felt good. It felt right,” recalled Sutherland.

In order to make concerts and events possible, Sutherland and his bandmates have had to coordinate travel and flights well in advance. Although all four band members live in the far north, getting together to practise involves much more than a road trip or a quick flight.

For a successful show, it routinely takes “Working with the organizers of the event, usually weeks ahead, sometimes even months,” said Sutherland, “trying to nail down who’s coming from what city and what community.”

Sutherland is from Attawapiskat First Nation, Gillies is from Fort Albany First Nation, and Louttit and Tomatuk are from Moose Factory First Nation. Altogether, there is a distance of over 200 kilometres, which makes practising difficult, let alone performing.

“[There was] very little time spent together for the creative process,” said Sutherland.

But the band didn’t let distance deter them. They travelled to Toronto to record both their albums.

“Going from black spruce trees to concrete, it’s always a bit of a shock,” Sutherland joked.

“Life in northern Ontario is a unique experience, particularly where I’m from, which is the far north. There are no roads in or out, except for the ice road, which is open for eight weeks out of the year. It’s tough. It’s a real tough place to live and survive.”

This year, the James Bay Winter Road is slated to open at the end of the month. The ice road connects the communities of Attawapiskat, Fort Albany, and Kashechewan to Moosonee.

Sutherland, who writes most of the band’s songs, uses obstacles like distance to fuel his music.

“A lot of the writing, for me, is about trying to get a message out,” said Sutherland. “Family, love, the land, the people. […] I think the challenges are similar for a lot of First Nations people in Canada, particularly in the far north. We have some really big challenges ahead of us in terms of social well-being.”

Sutherland also has cultural responsibilities in Attawapiskat, ranging from his role in seasonal hunts and activities, to traditional ceremonies and music, to regular help with chopping firewood, or hunting wild meat for elders and family members.

“I did sing for many years on the drum. I still sing, mostly on the hand drum though—just from time to time, because it’s hard on my vocals. I have to pick and choose what I can do,” explained Sutherland.

Claire Wilcox | The Ontarion

Sutherland also works as the chief executive officer for economic development in Attawapiskat.

“I work mostly in business development. I work closely with the mine and several partners,” he explained. “I enjoy the work—it’s very challenging.”

Many aspects of life in the far north are challenging, but Sutherland maintains that the toughest one for him is being First Nations. He admits it’s difficult to dismantle racism and stereotypes, within and outside his community.

“I’ve encountered racism my whole life—still in my job today,” said Sutherland. “Even with my own people, I’m not ‘Native’ enough—[that’s one] of those challenges I have to face in my own First Nation community. […] It doesn’t really bother me. It’s trying to find a way to get people to relate to what I’m trying to say.”

That’s where music comes in. For Sutherland, being able to share the complexities of his personal experience as a First Nations man in the far north is a means of reconciliation.

“We have a message and I didn’t know what that was when I first started,” said Sutherland. “People kept asking us that question: ‘What is your message?’ And the music I’ve been writing has been about reconciliation for a long, long time. It’s been about my identity and trying to find myself. It’s been about, yes, I’m partially assimilated, but there’s a big part of me that isn’t, that’s still free and wild. Maybe I don’t want to go to work and sit at a desk. Maybe I want to be on the land. There’s still a big part of me that isn’t fully assimilated into the rest of society.”

Questions of identity and assimilation are complicated even further when transgenerational trauma like residential school is involved. All four band members are children of residential school survivors.

“We’ve all had to go through trying to reconcile with what happened to our parents, because it affected us too,” said Sutherland.

A recurring topic within the ArtsEverywhere Festival has been the question of what reconciliation is and what it looks like.

“It’s about helping us find ourselves, giving us a reason to live,” said Sutherland. “Help us find our identity again. It’s heartbreaking to know that we’re at a point in time where people feel like their only option is to take their own lives, and some of these [people] are children. It’s affected our community too. There’s a big challenge ahead of us. We need to heal, and I think all Canadians need to be a part of that.”

If there’s anything to learn, it’s that reconciliation is complicated and ongoing. For Midnight Shine, communication through music opens up a world of possibilities.

Reconciliation may start with a land acknowledgement, but it doesn’t end there.

“Music has no boundaries; it can break down many barriers—especially cultural barriers,” said Sutherland. “It’s universal. It speaks to everybody. To me, that’s exciting, because people want to listen. I think it gives us a voice.”

Photos by Claire Wilcox/The Ontarion.

Heble has been involved with improvisation as a listener, musician, and coordinator since childhood.

“My father was a classical Indian musician and, of course, improvisation figures pretty prominently in classical Indian music. So I grew up listening to improvisation,” he explained.

His first watershed moment, however, was in his teens.

“Somewhere around high school I had this formative moment where I traded in all my Paul McCartney and the Wings albums,” recalled Heble. “I traded in my fifteen records and got one German import by the experimental rock group Cannes. That was kind of a life-changing experience.”

When Heble founded the Guelph Jazz Festival in 1994, it wasn’t as closely tied to improvised music as it is now.

Heble quickly added an academic conference to the bill, which made it the only festival in North America to do so. By directly connecting musicians with their audience and facilitating an event where musicians could discuss and present their ideas, the festival’s academic conference built an audience for experimental improvised music.The next major step for Heble was the publication of Critical Studies in Improvisation, an academic journal that provided an even larger platform for the field of inquiry.

“The festival led to the conference, the conference led to a journal, the journal led to these big grants, which has led to this amazing network of people now,” said Heble.

The grants allowed Heble and his team to found the IICSI, which boasts just under 60 researchers from 20 institutions across the globe. The IICSI is centered at the University of Guelph, but has partner sites at McGill, the University of British Columbia, Memorial University in Newfoundland, the University of Regina, and most recently the University of California at Santa Barbara.

In applying for the initial SSHRC Major Collaborative Research Initiatives (MCRI) grant, which was awarded in 2007, the original team of 35 researchers wanted to present how improvisation incorporated topics from law, to pedagogy, to the sphere of social understanding.

“The argument we were making in trying to develop this field was that historically and institutionally, improvisation has largely been disparaged,” said Heble. “It’s been looked at askance. It hadn’t been studied really very much at all, and in the context of pedagogies, what happens in the classroom, arts funding policies, improvisation really wasn’t being talked about or being valued. So, what would it mean to put improvisation on the table, changing the way it was being understood?”

Heble and the team sought to study improvisation not only as a musical practice, but as a social practice as well.

“What does that tell us about what it means to negotiate difference in the context of a community? What does it mean in terms of our ability to listen to what’s going on around us, to adapt to our surroundings, to adapt to unprecedented change?” said Heble. “It seemed to me that these issues were at the heart of trying to understand what it might mean for us to get along in a globalized world.”

The IICSI studies both musical and theatrical improvisation, although Dr. Heble’s extensive training falls into the former category. The institute partners with Empty Space Theatre troupe in Kitchener-Waterloo for improvisatory theatrical work.

Along with Empty Space, the institute has several other partnerships in the region, including with KidsAbility, a Guelph-based organization that runs programs for children with physical or developmental disabilities. The partnership involves a series of workshops on improvisation, which often culminate in public performances, including at the Guelph Jazz Festival.

“Those performances are always absolutely amazing highlights of the festival for many people,” said Heble. “We hear from kids who participate in these events that they’re listening differently to the people around them and reacting differently. They have a self-confidence that they never had before. Or that they’re now actually enrolling in music lessons as a result of these projects. As part of our 10-year celebration of our partnership with KidsAbility, we’re actually in the process of planning a retrospective show which will take place at the 2017 Guelph Jazz Festival. We will feature stories of impact from the KidsAbility project. We’re hoping to interview some of the kids, maybe do some digital storytelling […] and bring back some of the alumni youth from the program who have now moved on to other things.”

Along with community partnerships, there is also academic potential as the institute continues to grow. Most of this new potential derives from years of contributing to the improvisation scene through conferences, concerts, and other events.

“We’re in the midst of trying to develop an interdisciplinary, inter-institutional graduate program in improvisation studies,” said Heble.

“There’s a lot of excitement. A lot has happened that has enabled the building of the field and the building of a real sense of community around this artistic practice.”

The graduate program isn’t the only major project in the works.

“We submitted a project to the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grant in the hopes of establishing a new performing arts facility here on the University of Guelph campus.”

If successful, the result would be a performing arts research facility equipped with telematics to allow performances across geographical space.

Heble also has two books in the works. Classroom Action, featuring writing from Heble’s former students, is slated to be published this April. He is also co-authoring a book with U of G alumnus Jesse Stewart about improvisation and pedagogy.

Heble accredits the Impact Award to a team that began work on improvisation long before their first grant approval.

“The Impact Award is in my name, but it’s really an award that celebrates the work of the whole team. It’s recognition for amazing work that a team of people have been doing.”

Heble, for all his acclaim, remains humble.

“I would certainly want to acknowledge, not only the members of the research team, but my amazing staff, because none of this would have been possible without my staff, in particular Justine Richardson, Elizabeth Jackson, and Rachel Collins.”

Photo by Claire Wilcox/The Ontarion.