Tumivut in Iqaluit: like a family reunion

Four of Tumivut’s five members stand on the hill in back of Iqaluit’s Inuksuk High School where they performed Sept. 9. (PHOTO BY JUSTIN NOBEL)

Cynthia Pitsiulak and Charlotte Qamaniq-Mason take a break during their Sept. 9 performance in Iqaluit, part of the Alianait music festival’s concert series. (PHOTO BY JUSTIN NOBEL)

Cynthia Pitsiulak and Charlotte Qamaniq-Mason throat sing during Tumivut’s Sept. 9 concert in Iqaluit. (PHOTO BY JUSTIN NOBEL)

JUSTIN NOBEL

Tumivut, a nationally acclaimed band that features two Nunavut throat singers, played their first concert ever in Iqaluit Sept. 9, part of the Alianait music festival’s series of concerts in the city.

“This is really huge for us,” said Tumivut singer Charlotte Qamaniq-Mason, who is originally from Igloolik but who spent much of her childhood in Iqaluit. “It’s one thing to perform in front of hundreds of people who have no idea who you are, but it’s another thing to perform in front of people who know you and your whole family.”

The show, held in the Inuksuk High School auditorium, featured rock songs, hip hop, beat boxing and of course, traditional Inuit throat-singing.

“It’s the most scary feeling and the most exciting,” said singer Cynthia Pitsiulak, who grew up in Kimmirut and Iqaluit.

The three other members of the band include Orick Terry, a tall trench-coat-clad Montrealer whose interest in music began when a Haitian uncle introduced him to traditional Haitian compas music, a variation on meringue; Daybi, a Cree hip hop artist who was once played in a band called the Slang Blossoms and a wiry Panama hat wearing guitar player named Scott Oceans.

“There is no one genre that fits us,” explained Oceans. “Daybi is like eighties glam rock slash hip hop, Orick is like grunge rock slash vampire and I’m more alternative, folk, classic rock.”

Qamaniq-Mason and Pitsiulak both heard throat singing growing up but didn’t begin doing it themselves until they moved south for high school. “Throat singing was a bridge between our culture and who we were,” said Qamaniq-Mason.

Singing drew the girls together. “We became like sisters,” said Qamaniq-Mason.

“We finish each other’s sentences,” added Pitsiulak.

The girls met Daybi and Terry at a hip hop workshop in Toronto and immediately hit it off. They produced an album during a three-day marathon recording session in Daybi’s kitchen. The band’s big break came in 2009 when they won an award at the Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Awards.

A string of other awards followed, as well as performances in Ottawa, Hamilton, Winnipeg and a concert in Kangirsuk during the early spring. Friday was the first time the girls played in Iqaluit, a place they may have left but have not forgotten.

“Nature is pretty much our element,” said Qamaniq-Mason. “When people say the North is a frozen wasteland they have no idea what the North is.”

“What means most to me are the stars,” she continued. “The sky is a blanket of stars, billions and billions of stars, from one end of the horizon to the other.”

“You can even see the space stations,” added Pitsiulak.

Several of Tumivut’s songs address the issue of cultural change. A song entitled “PO Box 1965” is in the form of a letter to an elder from youths feeling lost and looking for direction. But elders can’t answer all the questions youth face today.

“We’ve always looked towards our elders,” said Qamaniq-Mason, “but now it’s hard because elders don’t know what we’re going through. They don’t understand having to work two jobs and pay rent and there are addictions nowadays they don’t know about.”

The band moved around town like celebrities, and spent the day before the show giving throat singing demonstrations and music lessons at schools. In between a morning session at Joamie Elementary School and an afternoon one at Inuksuk High School, the group climbed a hill above town. “Below us is Happy Valley,” explained Qamaniq-Mason. “And back behind us, the Road to Nowhere.”

“Does it really go to nowhere?” asked Oceans.

Daybi, whose grandfather was a champion dogsled racer for the Grand Rapids First Nation in Manitoba during the 1960s and 1970s, said the town reminded him of a Cree community. “I find it’s kind of time warpy,” he said.

Scott felt as if he had been transplanted into some storybook world. “The schools look like the modules from the movie The Abyss,” he said. “And the different colored buildings really liven up the landscape.”

“The city has grown a lot, there are lots of new buildings and houses,” said Qamaniq-Mason. “But it has the same feeling, it’s still my little town.”

On Friday night, after an opening set performed by bluesman Josh Qaumariaq, Tumivut took the stage. Qamaniq-Mason wore a sealskin headband decorated with dangling strings of beads and a black and purple amauti while Pitsiulak had on turquoise moccasins and a turquoise amauti.

The show’s highlight was when the two girls stood face to face, throat singing, and smiling broadly. They even tried some beat boxing, much to the audiences enjoyment. The band finished with a tender melody called “Aquanatomy”, which features the girls throat singing over soft melodic beats.

Outside, the northern lights flickered under a blanket of stars that stretched from one end of the horizon to the other.