Twin Flames: on the Tragically Hip, Chanie Wenjack, and being human

Things do not always go as planned at the Folk Festival. For instance, you arrive with a list of bands that you want to see, but for one reason or another, you miss them altogether, or only see a couple of songs before being called away to something else. Twin Flames was one such case in point. I had intentions to see them - and no plans to interview them - when I arrived Friday. But I was running late, and had only fifteen minutes to get to the main stage to hear Amythyst Kiah, whom I did have plans to interview. As I cleared the gate, I could hear Twin Flames' set underway at the East Stage, and raced over to catch what was only ever going to be one song. I was expecting something along the lines of "Taanisi Acoustic," a video shot during their tour of Nunavik, in Northern Quebec, a glowing, positive, even healing tune anchored by a simple but propulsive acoustic strum, with a repeated lyric of "life's too short" and soothing harmonies from husband-and-wife team Chelsey June (the Vancouver Folk Festival program offers that her background is Algonquin, Métis, Cree and settler) and Jaaji (pronounced yaa-yi; background "Inuk from Nunavik and Mohawk from Kahnawake," which is close to Montreal). I had liked "Taanisi Acoustic," so - checking my phone to make sure I had five minutes to spare - cut through the clearing to hear at least one song. 

I did not expect that song to be a Tragically Hip cover. As I got seated, Chelsey June - it's commonly misspelled online, but note that this is the band's preferred spelling - was offering a story about how they came to cover (and indigenize) "Grace Too," which she later repeated portions of during a brief interview: "We were asked to be part of a Legacy tribute concert in 2018," she tells me at the media tent, "And part of that was learning a Tragically Hip cover song. We were allowed to play one original song, too. It was a lineup of many accomplished Canadian artists who were part of that concert series, to raise funds for the Downie Wenjack Foundation. We had decided to cover a different song, originally" - that being "Fiddler's Green," she'd told the East Stage audience, but they were scooped for that song by a bigger band (they won't say who; "Just a very great band that we really admire") but they were "happy to change our choice. As stressful as it was, we are big believers in fate."

They got the blessing of Mike Downie, Gord's brother, to record their cover, Jaaji explains. "He came to our show, along with the mother of Chanie. He said, 'Thank you so much, from the family - thank you for keeping this going, and being a part of it, and being a voice.' And he said, 'From the family, you have our blessing to record the song.' We also went through getting the legal rights to do so, but that, coming from him and the family, meant a lot. Because he said, 'On one condition: you have Inuktitut in it.' That was huge coming from somebody who was in the industry as well, because he is in the industry, and he said, 'As long as you have Inuktitut in it.' We were like, 'Wow.' It meant a lot." 

Indeed, hearing Jaaji break into Inuktitut live, as well as adding some chants to the chorus, was one of the most powerful moments in the whole festival. What was he singing? At the table at the media tent, Jaaji looks at Chelsey June and sings, "There'll be no guarantee, there'll be no knock on the door," and she hums along briefly. "That wailing he does in the background in the original song," he says. "I sing the same words in Inuktitut. And at the time, we had a session group that used to tour with us, and they were actually singing those Inuktitut lines. They were not Inuk, they were regular, everyday people of settler heritage, singing those Inuktitut lines, which was amazing."

Chelsey June points to a lyric video of the cover with English, Inuktitut, and English translations of each phrase, which do have a slightly different flavour from the original. It's worth taking a minute to check it out before proceeding.  

Twin Flames by Allan MacInnis, Friday, July 15, on the East Stage of the Vancouver Folk Festival

The recording, of course, is even more touching given the history of Gord Downie's last years. On the East Stage, Jaaji had explained that "Gord Downie was a beautiful example of what an ally can be;" he knew he was sick, knew he was dying, but instead of focusing on that, chose to "amplify indigenous voices." Jaaji was referring, of course, to the album The Secret Path, about the death of Chanie Wenjack, who died lonely on railway tracks in the process of trying to escape from Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Ontario. 

There have been less-than-uniform reactions to Downie's recording The Secret Path; he received the order of Canada and the gratitude of Wenjack's family, but also drew some criticism, especially from Cree activist Clayton Thomas-Müller: "There are moments when [non-Indigenous advocates] should step back and push forward the living survivors of Canada's colonial legacy to be the spokespersons, to get the awards, to get the recognition," Thomas-Müller told the CBC, adding that the non-indigenous advocates "don't need" that spotlight on them. Tanya Tagaq, for her part, has disagreed with criticism that by Downie was acting as a "white saviour." but, even though I am a Hip fan, I always thought Thomas-Müller had a fair point. He continued in that CBC interview, published when Downie was still alive:

My challenge to Gord Downie is to lift up the stories of living survivors... Let's see him push those people forward to stand [at] the microphone with him standing behind them smiling. And let them tell their story.

As soon as I heard Twin Flames covering "Grace Too," I knew I had to ask Chelsey June and Jaaji about this. Wouldn't it have been better if Gord had written about a survivor who could speak for themselves?

Jaaji takes lead on the answer. "100%. I mean, we can't speak for Gord, or anybody else, for that matter, that does these things. But in the end, we cannot please everybody, y'know? I think, bottom line, it's not about what he didn't or did do, it's about whatever you can do to amplify whatever situation that any culture has to go through. If somebody's actually pointing it out and saying, 'Okay, we have to pay a little more attention to these problems...' And it wasn't so much about Chanie personally, for me; when I see it, it's more about the whole residential school story. So that's my answer for that."

Chelsey June adds, "I would just say that people always find a way to criticize anything in life." She's amiable as she says it; it's just a matter of observation. "And y'know, I think if someone is doing something out of the goodness of their heart, then they can't really go wrong, especially if it's done respectfully, and with proper consultation, which we've seen that Gord did; [he did] his due diligence. I think rather than looking at the negative things, maybe people would want to look at the more positive message, and how he did help amplify voices and amplify the story - the stories - of what happened here in Canada. We're just always honoured to play that song, because it's helped our voice, again, get further, in an industry that is not always super open to hearing indigenous voices. So by covering a song by a very loved Canadian band, it's given us some of our own voice... it was such a gift, it has been such a gift to us, that song. [People] listen to that song, and then they start listening to our original library of songs and it's like, fan-building. We really appreciate that."

Chelsey

Chelsey June on Saturday, by Sharon Steele, not to be reused without permission

I observe that I think that Gord Downie himself would have been moved by the cover, but - here's the problem; I'm interviewing a band whose only song I really know is a cover, and we have now, uh, covered that. I apologize and mention that I want to ask about another artist who is not them, Inuit musician Willie Thrasher (whom I interviewed in 2016, and who is a very good example of an Indigenous person being helped into the spotlight by an ally, one Kevin James Howes, whose curation of the Grammy-nominated Native North America anthology brought Willie an unexpected and welcome late-career Rennaissance). Is Thrasher - I believe still a resident of Nanaimo, BC - meaningful to Twin Flames? 

"He's definitely legendary. It was something that I grew up with. What's really funny is, his niece is on our last album." 

"This album?" I have the album in question on hand, Omen, and Jaaji points out a credit for Nina Segalowitz, a throat singer from the Northwest Territories, who appears on the album's title track. "She is an amazing throat singer," he says. "She's classically trained. And we actually just performed with her in Almonte last weekend!"

Segalowitz was a survivor of the Sixties Scoop; she tells a bit of her story here, and elaborates with a quick response to an email that Willie was her uncle, and her mother was his sister, Margaret Thrasher, who is also apparently part of this painful story of children being separated from their birth parents. Segalowitz, asked to comment on her collaboration with Twin Flames, says that "being asked to add throatsinging to one of the many creations on Omen was an honour. Being able to sing songs from a time when Mother Earth was not so at risk and using it to raise awareness is a gift."

That's the thing about interviewing someone: you don't always know where the good stories are, so you have to take a few blind shots. Asking about Willie Thrasher paid off, so the next thing that occurs to me has to do with, well, the Dayglo Abortions, whom I have interviewed a few times this past year (Twin Flames don't actually know the band, it turns out, and I  note that they can be somewhat "ugly and confrontational"). I ask Jaaji about a story told to me by Matt Fiorito of the Dayglos, about growing up in Iqaluit - then called Frobisher Bay - being bullied by Inuit kids. Jaaji is from Quaqtak, himself, but says, "There's racism everywhere. In the end, racism is still going to be there. And - we're musicians. We do have people who look at us and say, 'You're not enough of this' or 'You're that,' but there are a lot of people who are hurt in this world. And that will often result in deciding to feel that they have an opinion. That's just in the end poor parenting; and the parent is probably someone who is going through a lot of stuff, too. We have no control of that, and in the end, music is music." 

Are there any songs that do have political content on the album? "There's a way of presenting something without it being in your face and making somebody feel like they have to be accountable for something," he says thoughtfully. "I think if you can expose a situation in a manner where somebody is able to not feel like they're threatened or being pointed at, then you're able to reach that person. If you start to become this, 'Hey rah rah, we're a punk band and we're going to make you feel uncomfortable,' you just lost that person. We're not about making people feel like they're to blame. We're about making people understand where we come from, without hatred, without, essentially, violence. Because violence is already there, violence has already happened, and violence is going to continue... We're about making people feel like they're part of the conversation."

Chelsey June sums it up: "We're not political." 

Jaaji refames it: "We're not political in that way. We do talk about situations that are real, that are there, but we're not about trying to gain any kind of popularity by being the 'hey rah rah.' There's plenty of bands that do that. We're not about that." 

Chelsey June: "Both of us are mixed-heritage, so it's not about picking a side or feeling like we need to stand for one side or the other, or make the other side feel bad. We're musicians first. We just happen to have a culture that does play a part in storytelling and the things that we're sharing. But it's more just about bringing people together. I would say that the song 'Human' is a prime example." 

"Human" was written in partnership with UNESCO, to celebrate the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages (the band is interviewed further about that here, with Jaaji teaching the lyrics in Inuktitut, so even you can sing along). The English version of the chorus is, "I am human. I am people." The sentiment recalls some great John Trudell observations about people being human before they were divided by a "colonizing mentality" into one classification or another, which appear in the film Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian, which you can see for free online, but it's too much of a stretch to work Trudell into the conversation, so I just listen.  

"We're all human, we're all alive, we're all just trying to figure out our time here," Chelsey June says. "If we continuously approach things from a place of anger, then nothing will ever get better. We try to approach music and songwriting always from a place of love and understanding. We try to share that with our audiences, and we see that the fanbase that we've acquired in the past nine years are people that care about people, and seeing good things happen in life. There's negativity everywhere, all over the media, everywhere. I get sick of it! If there was a 'Happy News Channel,' that's the channel that I'd be watching. We don't have to look very far to find ugliness in the world. When we perform, we're sharing our emotions and our experiences firsthand, and people are able to relate to that, because it's the humanity of just being here and being alive."

Jaaji agrees: "It doesn't cost anybody anything to be human."

Twin Flames on Saturday, by Sharon Steele, not to be reused without permission

In the end, mostly we've ended up talking about what Twin Flames is not. Is there a song on the album that we can talk about that gives a good clear view of who the band is? Jaaji points to "Who I Am," which he explains will appeal to people who are into love songs: "It's about both of us coming from different backgrounds and meeting around that fire, having hope that you're going to grow old with somebody. You never know what's going to happen. You may show up to the date late, but at least you did show up." 

What fire? Chelsey June explains: "We met on a television show for musicians in 2014. It was a very fun show; it was for musicians, and we were being filmed on the same day. Fate brought us together, and we reconnected a few months later and decided to make music, and then make a life together. It's been nine years ago, and we play about 200 shows to 300 shows a year, and have a lot of fun doing it." 

Coming to the Vancouver Folk Fest was "definitely a bucket list" item for Twin Flames, Jaaji says. "We picked up instruments very late in life. [When] we started nine years ago, we never thought we'd be touring the world. And here we are, we're at one of the best music festivals in all of Canada, one of the best folk festivals in all the world. We're just happy to be here!" 

"It's a beautiful place with beautiful people," Chelsey June adds. As they sign my CD, crows caw from overhead. Children run happily down trails, past pecking ducks and people gnawing tornado potatoes off sticks. Sun shines down through flickering leaves; a dragonfly zips by. It's pretty much impossible to disagree. 

If you've enjoyed this - or if, like me, you've seen less of Twin Flames than you'd like - the good news is that you still have a few chances to see the two as they continue their tour of the West Coast (look at the panel to the right on that link for accurate information). They play Jericho Beach again tonight, have a show of their own this Tuesday night at St. James Community Centre, and then next weekend play at the Mission Folk Festival. For more information, see their website, or the Rogue Folk Website re: Tuesday's show.