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Ojib­way com­mu­ni­ties strad­dle the bor­der between Cana­da and the U.S. In Min­neso­ta, where they are often called “Chippe­wa” there has long been a lit­tle gold­mine of musi­cal vital­i­ty at Ponemah, a small set­tle­ment on the long penin­su­la that sep­a­rates Upper and Low­er Red Lake. It’s an area, unusu­al in the U.S., that close­ly resem­bles to wilder, remot­er, more tra­di­tion­al­ist Cana­di­an side of the bor­der. This is where some of the ear­li­est record­ings of Ojib­way music were made, when Kimi­wun’s puber­ty dream­songs were record­ed, a hun­dred years ago. Those songs are most­ly still alive, though they have evolved in both style and the con­text in which they are sung. The Ponemah Chippe­wa Singers car­ried on the tra­di­tion in the 1970s. 

I was play­ing this old tape when my friend Isaac White walked into my apart­ment, and he imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized the style. He had heard anoth­er record­ing from the region, and tak­en a lik­ing to it, though he’s a born-bred-and-but­tered Toron­ton­ian who knows noth­ing about native music and had nev­er been to a pow wow. I was aston­ished that his ear was keen enough to spot it, with­out any prepa­ra­tion. It just goes to show how dis­tinc­tive the Min­neso­ta / North West­ern Ontario style is, and how it can speak to an audi­ence out­side its back­woods origins.