Alianait opens applications for 11th circumpolar music fest

The Circumpolar Soundscape ensemble performs at Alianait’s 2013 music festival. The team included, from left, Greenland’s Nive Nielsen, Diyet of Yukon, Sylvia Cloutier of Nunavut (born in Nunavik), and Leela Gilday of the Northwest Territories. (PHOTO PETER VARGA)

Are you a musician looking for a cool place to perform?

The Alianait Arts Festival is accepting applications from musicians to play Nunavut’s biggest music festival, which runs June 26 to July 1 next year in Iqaluit.

Alianait, which prides itself as one of the circumpolar world’s premier showcases for music and the arts, plans to host more than 50 performers this year – most of them from northern Canada and neighbouring Arctic regions.

“We’ve always tried to have close to 70 per cent northern [musicians], and certainly we want to keep to that,” said Heather Daley, executive director of Alianait Arts.

From small beginnings in 2005, the festival has since grown to call itself “the world’s circumpolar stage,” attracting performers from throughout Canada’s North – and in more recent years, Greenland, Scandinavia, Alaska and Russia.

Alianait’s invitation is also open to non-northern performers — which sets up opportunities for unique jam sessions where musical styles can mesh and meld.

Applications are open until Jan. 2, 2015 for southern performers, and Jan. 30 for northerners.

Artists who live in any of Canada’s three territories, Nunavik in northern Quebec, Nunatsiavut in Labrador or northern regions of other provinces “where people are culturally linked to the northern territories” are considered northerners, Daley told Nunatsiaq News.

Alianait will also consider whether an artist’s musical performance style “is culturally or linguistically linked to Inuit or aboriginal tradition of culture,” Alianait states in a Nov. 17 news release.

This is in keeping with Alianait’s added goal of fostering the development of Nunavut musicians, Daley said.

International performers from circumpolar regions in other countries are also welcome — including Greenland, Scandinavia, Alaska, and Russia.

Last year’s festival saw the return of a Russia-based Mongolian band called Namgar, an audience favourite — who also performed in 2008, Daley said.

“They found us through the application process.”

Alianait flies its performers in and out of Iqaluit, and offers accommodation, per diems and performance fees. A volunteer committee will select performers and contact them by March 20.

“From the preliminary emails I’ve been getting over the last month, I’m expecting that we’ll get a good number of applicants this year,” Daley said Nov. 20.

Alianait’s board of directors hopes to get the festival’s basic line-up ready by the end of March.

Until then, the group will continue to put on occasional shows in Iqaluit and other communities.

See Alianait’s website to apply as a performer for the 11th annual music festival.