Back when people were still recording on wax cylinders, an anthropologist went into the Wolastoq river basin to make field recordings of the songs of the region. The ones that are still intact are sitting in a museum in Ottawa. Jeremy Dutcher, a young opera singer, is taking the songs out of the archive and incorporating them into new opera compositions, so that he’s literally singing alongside his ancestors.

The project – “Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa” – is set to be released in the fall.

This is part two of a series. Part one dealt with Native North America Vol. 1, a re-issue of Indigenous folk, rock and country artists from the 60s through the 80s.