For two Inuit grandmas, rap was always for the younger generations — until it wasn’t.
On Tuesday, Julie Ivalu and Koomook McLister made their hip-hop debuts with the song Tagvauvugut.
The music video for the track premiered the same day on the opening night of the Asinabka Festival, an Indigenous film and media arts festival held in Ottawa.
The endeavour started with a Facebook post calling for Inuit grandma rappers.
McLister’s background is in throat singing. One of her most recent performances was in front of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during Devolution in Nunavut this past March. McLister’s husband read the post and tipped her off about an opportunity to try her hand at a different music genre. She initially ignored him, but then agreed to put her name in to be part of the project.
Ivalu saw the same post and ignored it too: “Inuit elders don’t do rap,” she said to herself. Then a friend called her about the opportunity. It wasn’t long before she was roped in.
Any trepidation from the grandmothers was gone when Ivalu and McLister saw each other at the first meeting. The two have known each other for a few years and were happy to work on their first rap song together.
“As soon as they come out the car, I'm like, I know them, I love these elders already,” Ivalu said. “We’re going to do this.”
During three workshopping sessions, the grandmothers knew they wanted to prioritize both Inuktitut and the Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit principles, which are often referred to as IQ principles and recognized as the Inuit ways of knowing and traditional knowledge.
For the grandmothers, it was essential to rap solely in Inuktitut to carry forward the language. But it was also important that people who speak other languages could understand, so translators worked on subtitles.
As they created a rap song and video, the Inuit elders found teaching is a two-way street. Grandmothers are always trying to teach the younger generations, but along the way learn from the youth as well, McLister said, pointing to the rap songs and video she watched to prep for Tagvauvugut.
Tagvauvugut was produced by Obeatz with lyrics co-written by Pitsulala Lyta and direction by Zoey Roy, a Cree-Dene Michif spoken word poet and hip-hop artist in her own right. Roy directed the song as part of her larger Medicine Songs Project which celebrates the power of kinship through seven songs. For example, Tagvauvugut was a successor to Roy’s 2018 Kokum Rap, which included grandmothers from Roy’s territory, including her mother.
“I am a songwriter, but I wanted to find the medicinal properties of people, grandmothers in particular,” Roy said. “What I found was a need to make multi-generational projects.”
For Roy, the project is not about grandmothers speaking to the world; it’s about them talking to their children in their language.
And so, these grandmothers are telling the children: “Don’t discredit us, but also know we are listening to you, and we celebrate you,” Roy said.
Matteo Cimellaro / Canada’s National Observer / Local Journalism Initiative
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