Jeremy Dutcher

Jeremy Dutcher is a classically-trained Canadian Indigenous tenor, composer, musicologist, performer and activist, who previously lived in Toronto, Ontario and currently lives in Montréal, Québec. He became widely known for his first album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, which won the 2018 Polaris Music Prize and the Juno Award for Indigenous Music Album of the Year at the 2019 Juno Awards.A Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) member of the Tobique First Nation in North-West New Brunswick, Dutcher studied music and anthropology at Dalhousie University. After training as an operatic tenor in the Western classical tradition, he expanded his professional repertoire to include the traditional singing style and songs of his community.He recorded Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa following a research project on archival recordings of traditional Maliseet songs at the Canadian Museum of History, many of which are no longer being passed down to contemporary Maliseet youth.He appeared as a guest judge in an episode of the third season of Canada’s Drag Race in 2022.In 2023, he released the album Motewolonuwok on Secret City Records. The album again features some songs performed in the Maliseet-Passamaquoddy language like on his debut, but also features some English-language songs.Dutcher identifies as two-spirit, a modern, pan-Indian, umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe aboriginal people fulfilling a traditional third-gender (or other gender-variant) ceremonial cultural role in their community.

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