Jeremy Dutcher

Jeremy Dutcher is a Two-Spirit song carrier, composer, activist, ethnomusicologist and classically-trained vocalist from New Brunswick, Canada who currently lives in Montréal, Québec. A Wolastoqiyik member of the Tobique First Nation in North-West New Brunswick, Jeremy is best known for his debut album, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa (The Songs of the People of the Beautiful River), recorded following a research project on archival recordings of traditional Wolastoqiyik songs at the Canadian Museum of History. Jeremy transcribed songs sung by his ancestors in 1907 and recorded onto wax cylinders, transforming them into “collaborative” compositions. The album earned him the 2018 Polaris Music Prize and Indigenous Music Album of the Year at the 2019 JUNO Awards. His 2019 NPR Tiny Desk Concert has over 85,000 views.
 

Jeremy studied music and anthropology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After training as an operatic tenor in the Western classical tradition, he expanded his professional repertoire to include the traditional singing style and songs of his community. Jeremy’s music transcends boundaries: unapologetically playful in its incorporation of classical influences, full of reverence for the traditional songs of his home, and teeming with the urgency of modern-day resistance.
 

Jeremy has toured the world, from Australia and Norway to Italy and the Philippines. He has worked with and performed for iconic artists such as Joni Mitchell, Beverly Glenn Copeland and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Jeremy is regularly sought out for his perspectives on queerness, Indigeneity, language revitalization, and fashion, including a 2022 appearance as a guest judge on Canada’s Drag Race. In 2022, Jeremy and his family launched Kekhimin, the first ever Wolastoqey language immersion school, in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Motewolonuwok, marks Dutcher’s first time writing and singing it in English. A powerful invitation for collective healing and understanding.

Making music is like learning a language, Dutcher says. It’s “an unfurling”—a constant exploration of what you want to say and how you can express it. Motewolonuwok features Wolastoqey traditionals, poetry from by the Cherokee poet Qwo-li Driskill, but also Dutcher’s first songs written in English. This is an acknowledgment of his father’s tongue, and also a way of singing “directly to the newcomer [settler],” in their own language, to tell his community’s stories of grief, resilience and emergence. “I needed to contextualize my own story,” he explains, and Motewolonuwok moves like a collective wish and a corrective medicine.