{"id":4931,"date":"2023-01-20T12:40:12","date_gmt":"2023-01-20T18:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deadofwinter.ca\/?p=4931"},"modified":"2023-09-26T14:39:02","modified_gmt":"2023-09-26T19:39:02","slug":"truthtelling-through-choral-music-andrew-balfours-truth-and-reconciliation-concerts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deadofwinter.ca\/truthtelling-through-choral-music-andrew-balfours-truth-and-reconciliation-concerts\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cTruthtelling\u201d through choral music: Andrew Balfour\u2019s Truth and Reconciliation concerts<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Andrew Balfour’s Captive<\/em> receives a standing ovation at Choral Canada’s 2022 Podium Conference and Festival in Toronto, Ontario.
Photo: Roland Deschambault<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Storytelling has an undeniable impact on our Canadian political imagination today. As a nation that heralds itself as multicultural, multi-ethnic, and an all-around hospitable place to live, telling individual stories\u2014especially those belonging to the newcomer or marginalized voices among us\u2014has become necessarily entangled in the way we understand our larger national identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew Balfour\u2019s Truth and Reconciliation concert series is one such instance of individual storytelling turned political. Balfour, a Cree composer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, has embarked on an ambitious project to inform\u2014and transform\u2014the landscape of Canadian political storytelling, through fusions of musical styles and the sheer power of the human voice. In May 2022, Balfour performed the third installment of the series, Captive<\/em>, a project generously supported by a Reconciliation Grant from The Winnipeg Foundation, alongside other major funding bodies like the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and the Winnipeg Arts Council. In collaboration with Dead of Winter, a Winnipeg-based choral ensemble, and a talented roster of Indigenous and M\u00e9tis guest artists, Balfour presented Captive <\/em>inboth Winnipeg and Toronto. Each performance was received with tremendous gratitude, a response that speaks to the powerful catharsis one can experience through artistic storytelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAndrew\u2019s direct approach, his direct words and body language, was so refreshing to witness as an Indigenous woman and artist,\u201d reflected Cheri Maracle, an Indigenous Canadian actress who was featured as a guest artist in the Toronto performance at Trinity St. Paul\u2019s United Church. \u201cHis artistry was captivating, evocative and true. The words hit and strung on my nerve, to where I had tears streaming down my cheeks. We know what we went through and what our ancestors went through, and what we still live. Picking up the dead pieces of colonization and claiming them is difficult for a nation. Andrew\u2019s [work] drew attention to this reality\u2014the bitter truths of life for us as Indigenous people\u2014through beautiful music, voices, words and movement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the beginning of his compositional career, Balfour has sought to reconcile his two worlds: the world of the sixties scoop which, growing up, led him to choral church music; and the Indigenous music he was introduced to by Elders as part of his healing journey. His earlier compositions like Wa Wa Tey Wak<\/em>, Medieval Inuit<\/em>, Empire \u00c9trange<\/em> and Take the Indian<\/em> already showed Balfour taking on stories of the oppressed and sharing them with his audiences, combining the choral polyphony he grew up on with the visceral rhythms and keening melodies of his Indigenous heritage. In 2017, following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, Balfour began programming a series of concerts with Dead of Winter (formerly Camerata Nova), a choral ensemble he co-founded, named in reference to the group\u2019s cold but creatively robust city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Each concert of this series is curated around a theme or concept that resonates with the Canadian Indigenous experience, particularly the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples at the hands of colonial settlers. Taken<\/em> (2017) is inspired by the taking away of Indigenous cultures and languages and the physical abduction of Indigenous people; Fallen<\/em> (2018) is an anti-war choral drama focusing on the stories of Indigenous men forced into military service during World War One. Then, this May, Balfour and Dead of Winter added to their growing legacy as choral storytellers with the performance of Captive<\/em>. Captive<\/em> speaks to the Indigenous experience of captivity, from imprisonment and struggles with addiction to the idea of captive languages and medicines. Dead of Winter, alongside an exceptional roster<\/a> of Indigenous collaborators, performed Captive<\/em> in Winnipeg at the West End Cultural Centre, and in Toronto at Podium<\/a>, Canada\u2019s premiere choral conference and festival. The program was received with wild success in both cities, notably by audiences made up of mostly non-Indigenous people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis performance wasn\u2019t a concert; this was ceremony,\u201d remarked a well-respected choral conductor in the Winnipeg musical community. He was certainly not alone in his experience (and his comment could very well be turned into an epigraph for Balfour\u2019s entire series). Simeon Rusnak, who holds an education in Music History at the University of Manitoba and now hosts Morning Light<\/em>, a program on Winnipeg\u2019s Classic 107 radio station, is a long-time supporter of Balfour\u2019s work. Reflecting on the Winnipeg performance he attended of Captive<\/em>, Rusnak writes, \u201cCaptive<\/em> provided a rare opportunity to sit and wrestle with emotions, confront discomfort, acknowledge wrongs, and celebrate joys. To me, this is what Andrew and his compositions do in such a deft and poignant manner: address past wrongs while also confronting current realities.\u201d Rusnak is speaking to his personal experience of Balfour\u2019s music as a non-Indigenous person, but his testimonial captures the broader scope of Balfour\u2019s project: that of remembering the specificity of Indigenous peoples\u2019 affliction and reconciling it within the collective stories of our present, and future, nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe do these one-word thematic concerts \u2014 Taken<\/em>, Fallen<\/em>, Captive<\/em> \u2014 for our non-Indigenous audiences,\u201d says Balfour. \u201cFor instance, what\u2019s the Indigenous perspective on \u201ccaptivity\u201d? If these concerts were specifically for Indigenous people, we would need to perform them in an Indigenous language. But we want to tell stories about misunderstandings between non-Indigenous and Indigenous peoples, making a crucial point that these stories are not ancient history, but repeat themselves into the present day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Captive<\/em> program, the theme of presenting Indigenous stories to non-Indigenous audiences manifests as a palpable, musical tension. Listeners hear Western classical elements of choral composition and performance reimagined within the improvisatory nature of Indigenous styles of music-making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAndrew\u2019s powerful depictions of loss and injustice come through in the startling dissonances and repeated rhythmic gestures that he uses,\u201d remarks Mel Braun, head of the Desautels Faculty of Music vocal program at the University of Manitoba and Balfour\u2019s collaborator, as well as a conductor on all Truth and Reconciliation concerts. Braun has spent the last 13 years working with Balfour, witnessing the growth in his compositional voice. \u201cA sense of the land we need to get back to also comes through in the hypnotic soundscapes he creates. Is there hope? Yes, but it comes at the cost of people acknowledging past mistakes and finding new ways of living together. As Andrew often says, it\u2019s the artists with their collaborations, not the politicians, who will show the way to true reconciliation and growth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Captive<\/em> program\u2014in both cities\u2014opened and closed with traditional Indigenous Honour and Travelling Songs performed by Ray Coco Stevenson in Winnipeg and Rosary Spence in Toronto. Dead of Winter then performed \u201cWoman,\u201d a riveting and emotive piece written by Kristi Lane Sinclair (her very first choral composition). Electro-acoustic violist Melody McKiver performed alongside the ensemble as a guest artist for \u201cWoman\u201d and \u201cCaptive\u201d to create an eerie but stunning soundscape that set a darker tone to the program, even as the M\u00e9tis fiddler, Alexandre T\u00e9treault, dotted the poignant atmosphere with lively displays of virtuosity (to whoops and hollers from the vocalists!). At the heart of the program was Balfour\u2019s \u201cCaptive,\u201d inspired by the story of 19th-century Chief Poundmaker<\/a>. Poundmaker had been known by his people of the Poundmaker Cree Nation as a peacemaker, but following the North-West Rebellion of 1885, he was arrested and shamefully convicted of treason. During Poundmaker\u2019s time in prison, his health deteriorated considerably and he died of a lung hemorrhage the following year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s important to highlight that Balfour prefaced the Toronto performance with a dedication to Odelia and Nerissa Quewezance, a pair of sisters from Keeseekoose First Nation in Saskatchewan, who are currently serving a life sentence for what is considered by many as a wrongful conviction<\/a>. The sisters have been in prison for three decades, but in recent news, their case has been reopened for an investigation<\/a> into a \u201cmiscarriage of justice.\u201d Balfour, in his opening comments, lamented the recent case. He drew attention to it as a reminder that Poundmaker\u2019s story of wrongful conviction belongs to the present day as much as to the past, as we continue to witness the injustices that stem from a history of poor storytelling and even poorer listening. In essence, Captive<\/em> and its sister programs are a kind of call to arms, or rather, a call for better, more informed listening to those stories that appear easy to dismiss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what, exactly, does it look like to be a better listener? And who in our society do we trust as our storytellers? There is another looming question here that demands much more attention than a single article can offer. What is the distinction between \u201ctruthtelling\u201d and storytelling, and what does this distinction tell us about the kinds of truths we seek, political or otherwise? These are difficult questions that may belong to a philosophical treatise sooner than a single article, though we may still use a single article\u2014or a daring artistic project\u2014as a platform to ask them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe, as artists, are truthtellers,\u201d says Balfour. \u201cWe are the ones who are telling and respecting these stories. As in, realizing the importance of what it is we\u2019re telling. We\u2019re vessels for the truth. It\u2019s not the same as government commissions or legal commissions; it\u2019s important that we\u2019re able to tell these stories without editing or censorship, without political delegacies. I think this is the important thing that Dead of Winter is doing, that is, making room for myself, or other Indigenous composers including Cris Derksen, Eliot Britton, Jeremy Dutcher, or any of the other guest artists we\u2019ve worked with over the years, to tell their truth, as it is, without censorship.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe way he combines his influences to find new musical ways of telling stories is unique to him,\u201d says Braun. \u201cIf anyone understands both sides of the colonial issue, it\u2019s Andrew, because he has lived in both worlds. What he shows us in his music is how the Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities can work together side-by-side to tell stories that create a beautiful new world. If that\u2019s not de-colonizing, nothing is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Balfour\u2019s project is not just to make room for more marginalized voices to be heard, but to challenge the ways in which we hear, and thereby understand, underrepresented and difficult stories. Amid a society increasingly disillusioned with its institutions, Balfour proposes that today, it\u2019s the artists who are responsible for transforming our collective stories. It\u2019s our composers, singers, and musicians who are empowered to break the violent patterns in our nation\u2019s history, through sheer resonance and effective artistry. Indeed, the remarkable malleability, dynamism and technical gifts mastered in the human voice can convey truths that are at once convincing and impossible, accessible and ceremonious\u2014all the trappings of a good story. Or the story of a nation\u2019s future. Who knows? Attending a choral concert could very well be one of the more revolutionary things we do this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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