How Shawnee Kish and Kristi Talbot wrote Yohahí:yo (The Good Road) for the Canadian Music Class Challenge
The Mohawk track serves as this year's Indigenous language song
CBC Music's Canadian Music Class Challenge 2024 is officially open: you can now register here.
Juno-nominated Mohawk singer-songwriter Shawnee Kish wrote "Yohahí:yo (The Good Road)," which is this year's Indigenous language song for the Canadian Music Class Challenge. The song was commissioned by CBC Music and the library partnerships program at CBC, and the lyrics and sheet music are available now.
Kish penned the song with her sister, Kristi Talbot, an early childhood educator, during a workshop with youth at the Fort Erie public library.
Talbot also helped create Singing in Indigenous Languages: A Practical Guide For Educators, a new resource from CBC Music and MusiCounts that has activities, discussion prompts and repertoire suggestions. It is a starting point for teachers, librarians and community educators wanting to integrate Indigenous languages into music programs in a way that honours Indigenous ways of knowing and cultural practices.
The sisters joined Unreserved host Rosanna Deerchild to talk about how the new song came to be, and how it can be used as an educational and cultural tool to uplift Indigenous language in the classroom.
You can read an excerpt of their conversation below, and hear it in full above at 50:48.
Shawnee, tell us about this song "Yohahí:yo (The Good Road)."
I was asked to be a part of this project, and I knew the most important thing to me is how much power music has [and] how much medicine it's given me in my own life. And I knew that since so many youth across Canada were going to have access to this song, I wanted it to come from the voices of youth. So, you know, what was important to me is that we collaborate with my sister, the language and these youth and their story and their background and their voices and what they had to say with a guitar. And we sat in a room and we wrote this song and it was beautiful, and it was magical to be able to do that and then in turn, get to share it with other youth. So to me, that's the importance of this song and the language that it was translated into. And there's just so much power in it.
What message did you want to share with it?
I wanted the message to come from them going into that writing session, [in] that writing room with these youth. I wanted to leave it open. We kind of did some diary writing. It was a songwriting workshop and I really wanted them to speak without dictating what should be said. And so those words are their words to imagine, to dream, to believe, to [support] togetherness. And to me, what they wanted to say was, "If you believe in yourself and you believe in a dream, we work together. Anything is possible."
And why was it important for you to make that space for those kids to discover their own message?
Well, music saved my life when I was younger and I was struggling with my own path and not being close to my own culture and traditions and teachings. And I really did struggle. So to have music so close as a medicine for me, I know that it holds so much power [and] what it can do for a young person who's struggling. And so it was important for me to create that space for this opportunity that I have. My sister [and I] have this opportunity to create a space that's just safe and open and for these kids to be able to express their voices.
Kristi, why did you want to get involved in this project?
I always love an opportunity to work with the language and get the language out and share it with the world. And so my sister approached me and asked me. Her having the skills with the music, and me with the language, it seemed like a good opportunity to partner up. In this workshop, it was really cool to sit there and see that process of like Shawnee said, the diary writing and hearing what those kids had to say. And there was opportunity for me in that to help them connect with the language and even the culture. There was some teachings that I had the opportunity to share, which that ended up coming out with the title of the song "Yohahí:yo." We ended up having a discussion about "The Good Road" because I noticed the message that was coming out of it.
And how did you collaborate on the song? You know, with Shawnee's music and the Mohawk language?
As an early childhood educator, I had a collection of nursery songs that I had translated a few years ago when I was pregnant with my daughter, and my sister suggested to me that we get together and use her wonderful background with the experience of recording music and my background with translating of the songs. And we were able to partner up and make an album together called Sing Mohawk with Yako. I think that was about a year or two ago now. And from there we've had a few opportunities, such as the CBC Music Class Challenge [and] this was a branch of that experience.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length. To hear the full interview, listen to Unreserved.