August 14
I made it to Kuujjuaq (spelling is correct), though my shipmate Tim Donovan did not. Halifax was fogged in so he’ll be coming tomorrow. It doesn’t matter, since the flight from Kuujjuaq to Quaqtaq was cancelled and I’m stuck here for a day.  So we’re both delayed. And there’s a week-long music festival “Aqpik Jam” in Kuujjuaq so it appeared there were no hotel rooms and nowhere else to stay.

Things are turning out OK though because  I found the last hotel room from a friend of a man who gave me a ride in town (she works at the hotel), and was able to attend the music evening. It was a genuine auditorium with banked seating at the town hall. Quite a scene: four evenings of mostly folk music, a range of stuff for sale in the hall outside (crafts items, pies, jello with whipped cream, a balloon man making animals for kids, still at it when I emerged from the concert four hours later. The hall itself felt like a family event at the high school: little boys racing around chasing each other, lots of parents with babies, older people, endless comings and goings and greetings. I have the feeling most of Kuujjuaq passed in and out.

The music started at 7:30 with a chorus of little girls in the style of traditional dress (white shifts that are longer in front and back), chanting to the accompaniment of two boys with traditional drums. I think the boys were supposed to be together but they were pretty casual. But then it got better. There’s a tradition called throat singing where two women face each other and each does this amazing combination of deep-throated sounds and regular vocal-cord sounds in a repeated pattern of about two seconds. The sounds are extraordinary and unexpected, almost whale-like. The feeling is intense. It turns out to be a competition: the woman who laughs first loses. In this case, the two women leading the group paired up the little girls (maybe age 6 to 11?) and they went at it, though briefly, more as a demonstration than a contest. There were perhaps a dozen pairs, and each girl’s production was distinct. Then the two women went at it for perhaps a minute or two. The mature version was pretty gripping, and that was before I knew it was a contest!

After that is was traditional music with various combinations of instruments. The first singer was unbearable (I had to cover my ears) but it got better after that. Perhaps the best were the accordion players, first an elderly man and then a husband-wife team (French, Inuit). They really got the crowd going, with a dozen or so adults dancing in front of the stage. A couple got a bunch of children going as well. It seems that the accordion and the dancing that goes with it were an introduction brought from Scotland by 19th-century fishermen. It was picked up and adopted as a local form. The rest of the music was songs with a country western feeling, but obviously predating that, all in Inuit.  The crowd seemed to know a lot of the songs. The MC and all of the performers seemed to have a lot to say, but it was all in Inuit so I don’t know the content.  There were perhaps six sentences and a handful of songs in English. No French. A French-Canadian movie-star-handsome guy said hello to the cheering crowd and reported he’d caught his first Altantic salmon today; he’s performing tomorrow. So they got a few stars to come I guess.

One curious thing I should have asked about was that several performing groups came from Greenland. Is the modern music tradition the same?  Are Canadian and Greenlandic Inuit languages the same? They’re the same ethnic origin but with little contact for several hundred years, I think. Greenlandic is written with a Roman alphabet, Canadian Inuit (Inuktitut) with its own symbols.  Another huge question: how are the two different because of their respective colonial experience (Danish vs English/French)? The two places certainly feel and look different. Greenland has true home rule, and Canadian Inuit are working on it. But there are so many complexities to it that I hesitate to say anything.

A quick geopolitical lesson. The northern part of Quebec is now called Nunavit. It has some self government but is decidedly part of Quebec Province. 90% of the population is Inuit and they mostly speak their native tongue but probably many know both French and English.  Kuujjuaq is the most important town. It seems to be growing.  I have the feeling that, as in Greenland and Newfoundland, government services are being concentrated in a few locations and smaller settlements are losing them

The vast archipelago of island north of there is called Nunavuk. It now has its own local government (like a province?). It has an enormous area and a population of about 13,000. The capital is  Iqaluit on Baffin Island.