Nunavik song book highlights region’s best singers

You’d be hard pressed to find an Inuk from Nunavik or Nunavut who doesn’t know the iconic song by the late Charlie Adams, Quviasuppunga.

But a new little green book, produced by Nelly Duvicq-Mangiok of Ivujivik with Nunavik’s Avataq Cultural Institute, introduces you to many other singers and their songs, all of which are well-known in Nunavik.

The “Short anthology of popular Nunavik songs” includes 18 singers or groups and their music, from 1970 to 2015.

The lyrics are presented in Inuktitut and in Roman orthography, and the PDF version contains links to Youtube videos.

The idea for the book came when after Duvicq-Mangiok arrived in Ivujivik about nine years ago.

At home, the radio was always on and the music on air was often in Inuktitut and sung by Nunavimmiut artists, she said.

“I became interested, and I saw everybody knew those songs,” she said.

As Duvicq-Mangiok tells it, she started to learn the lyrics by heart before she was even able to carry on a conversation in Inuktitut.

“I am sure I learned a bit of vocabulary from those songs,” she said, and they became a good way for her to absorb the culture.

“So I wanted everyone to be able read the lyrics and feel those memories come back,” she said. “I wanted them to be out there.”

Among her favourite singers included in the song book is the late Tumasi Quitsaq of Akulivik.

“The lyrics are so funny,” Duvicq-Mangiok said. “Some are a play on words. A lot are telling stories. I love ‘Aiguuk’ about this partner—there’s a lot of love and it’s funny.”

Some of the more contemporary singers are well-known outside Nunavik—such as Beatrice Deer and the Twin Flames—but she’d like to see singers like Sinuupa and Saali also become household names in Canada.

Putting together the song book took longer than Duvicq-Mangiok thought it would. That’s because, along the way, she asked many people about the possible choices, and various songs ended up being removed or added.

What Duvicq-Mangiok ended up with is only “a glimpse” of music in Nunavik, she said.

Her introduction in Inuktitut, French and English provides an overview of popular music in Nunavik as a “contemporary form that borrows from tradition.”

Every household in Nunavik has received a hard copy of the book, but you can also download it as a PDF, for free, on Avataq’s website.