Veteran Nunavut songwriter picks up 2016 Commissioner’s Arts Award

Charlie Panigoniak rocked a music festival in Arviat last August hosted in his honour, despite living with advanced Parkinson’s disease. The Rankin Inlet musician was named this week as recipient of the 2016 Nunavut Commissioner’s Performing Arts Award. (PHOTO BY ERIC ANOEE)

Veteran Inuk singer-songwriter Charlie Panigoniak is the 2016 recipient of the Nunavut Commissioner’s Performing Arts Award, announced Nov. 7.

The performing arts award comes with a cash prize of $10,000 and a commissioner’s medallion.

“It is an honour to recognize Mr. Panigoniak for his outstanding contribution to Nunavut’s performing arts,” said Nunavut Commissioner Nellie Kusugak in a Nov. 7 release.

“Charlie Panigoniak created songs as an Inuk. He has travelled to many places to perform and he is a very good role model.”

Now 70, Panigoniak is considered a pioneer of Inuit music and a role model to a younger generation of Nunavummiut artists.

Panigoniak’s music has been a mainstay on the radios and in community centres across Nunavut since the 1970s when a radio producer took notice of the Rankin Inlet musician and started recording him for CBC’s Northern Service.

Since then, Panigoniak and his band have travelled across Nunavut, Greenland, Alaska and southern Canada, performing his Inuktitut-language songs.

But the songwriter’s health has been gradually deteriorating over the last 10 years since Panigoniak was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

That’s made it harder for the musician to play live shows, although Panigoniak made it to Arviat last August to play a tribute show in his own honour.

The Nunavut Commissioner’s Performing Arts Award, chosen by a committee, was created by former Nunavut Commissioner Ann Meekidjuk Hanson to honour the artistic achievement of the territory’s artists.

“Charlie Panigoniak is a territorial treasure, his songs are full of joy and humour, and capture the very essence of community life in Nunavut,” Kusugak said.