How does it feel to have become such instrumental figures for the people and practices of Nunavut? As an Inuk it makes me feel extremely fortunate to be able to bring forward important messages for my fellow Inuuqatiit (my people), it makes me very proud to see Inuit be proud of who they are and to see other’s be empowered and to make healthy changes in their lives.
How have you found the reaction to your music on a global scale? Over the years, we have been very lucky to be travelling around the world, our audiences tend to give us the same reaction where they say “Your music is infectious,” in a sense that our music makes them want to dance, they all scream back at us in our beautiful language, Inutktitut.
Three members of The Jerry Cans formed Nunavut’s first record label, Aakuluk Music, for the release of your third album Inuusiq last year. How was that experience? Living in this world, with the history of colonization, unfortunately it has been made okay to have English as a dominant language – it’s easy to be viewed as minority when we sing in our own language. When we first started sending in our music to many record labels, we mostly got refused and their reason was that they could not understand our lyrics. When we decided to create Aakuluk Music Inc., it was a great feeling to know that this will too be another learning curve.
