Jeremy Dutcher Wins Polaris Music Prize 2024 For Motewolonuwok
Becomes First Artist to Win Polaris Prize Twice
September 19, 2024 - - Jeremy Dutcher’s sophomore LP Motewolonuwok (Secret City Records) – his defiant, healing and queer exploration of modern indigeneity – has won the prestigious Polaris Music Prize 2024. Dutcher has also become the first artist to win the Polaris Music Prize twice, in its 19 year history. Dutcher first won the award in 2018, for his debut album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa.
Dutcher - a Two-Spirit song carrier, composer, activist, and ethnomusicologist from Tobique First Nation in Eastern Canada - originally vaulted himself into the upper echelons of Canadian performance with his 2018 debut, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa. Since winning the Polaris and JUNO Prizes, performing for NPR Tiny Desk, and collaborating with Yo-Yo Ma and Beverly Glenn Copeland, last fall Dutcher returned with Motewolonuwok, a moving and radiant exploration of contemporary Indigeneity and his place within it, presenting his most expansive work yet. The new album also marked Dutcher’s first time writing and singing in English. A powerful invitation for collective healing and understanding, “Shared tongue is a beautiful gift, with a complicated reason,” Dutcher explains. These new English songs are also a way of singing directly to the newcomer, or settler, in their own language — a direct line of communication that seeks to platform his community’s stories of healing, resilience, and emergence to all that may hear.
Motewolonuwok heaves with dynamic orchestration and the inherent drama of grand piano, recalling a long line of artists who have turned the classical establishment on its head to deliver compositions that are doubly ecstatic and modern — luminaries such as Julius Eastman, Perfume Genius, Arthur Russell, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, and Merce Cunningham. More intimate and expansive than anything Dutcher has created before, Motewolonuwok hedges the line between storytelling and composition as both a transcendental protest record and an exploration of self. This is experimental pop as corrective medicine: a defiant, healing, and queer experience that fills any listener with power and wisdom.
Tied to the album's release Dutcher was featured in Vogue, recently appeared on World Cafe and included in NPR Music's Best Songs of 2023 list, among others.
Watch the video for "Take My Hand," a live performance of "Pomawsuwinuwok Wanakiyawolotuwok," and a cover of Feist's "Graveyard"
Praise for Motewolonuwok
★★★★ – Rolling Stone France
“As powerful as his lyrics, though, is Dutcher’s performance style.” – Vogue
“[Jeremy Dutcher] brings forward the spirit of his people on this beautiful record.” — NPR Music
“There is revolution in this album… Motewolonuwok is about people rising up in the streets, about unity and community, about identity. Dutcher, who is a member of Neqotkuk (Tobique First Nation), shares an operatic timbre with Anohni, his songs transmitting a similar sense of spiritual commitment. There is real weight behind these songs, and Motewolonuwok carries it with sombre grace.” ★★★★ – MOJO
“A captivating set, with Dutcher’s extraordinary and expressive vocals underpinned by orchestral arrangements... Mesmerising, magical and often deeply moving.”★★★★
- The Morning Star
“Dutcher yearns earnestly in a powerful voice that lands somewhere between Anohni and Curtis Stigers, doling out lush soul ballads, which deal with land sovereignty and queerness” – Uncut
“Richly orchestrated, his intimate walks unfold an intense dramaturgy to transcend the pain of oppression and express the soothing beauty of resilience”. - Télérama
“[Ancestors Too Young] is a powerful new prism through which the composer shines his light. His plaintive vibrato still reflects his opera training as he sings, […] but his howl eventually rises to a rock-inspired crescendo […]. It's an exciting new direction for the composer's upcoming sophomore album, Motewolonuwok, mixing art rock influences with orchestral swells and a jazz rhythm section.” – Exclaim!’s Staff Picks
“The song [Skicinuwihkuk] is tender and lyrical, but also takes flight on a wave of orchestral sound that amplifies the song’s emotional content” – WNYC “New Sounds”
‘“Skicinuwihkuk” is a moving piece” – CBC Music
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