Jeremy Dutcher Motewolonuwok CD

Five years after winning the Polaris Music Prize with his ground-breaking debut, Canada’s Jeremy Dutcher has returned with a radiant exploration of contemporary Indigeneity and his place within it. With songs performed in his people’s Wolasotqey language but also, for the first time, in English, Motewolonuwok extends beyond anything the musician has made before, encompassing traditional song, starlit ballads and staggering orchestrations.  Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, released in 2018, vaulted Dutcher into the upper echelons of Canadian performance, from the Polaris and Juno Award stages to the judges’ panel on Canada’s Drag Race. The follow-up is more intimate, more personal, inspired by his growing understanding of the “middle space” of being Two Spirit—Indigenous and queer. In the Wolasotqey language, Two Spirit people are called “motewolonuwok”—“the people of great spiritual power” Motewolonuwok is a stepping-through and singing-into his full identity. In places the album features a full orchestra, with arrangements by Owen Pallett, and, on tracks like “Sakom,” a 12-voice choir.

Jeremy performed at  the Sydney Opera House in February as part of WorldPride and performed a side show in Melbourne