Musician Edzi'u creates soundscapes that explore colonialism and Indigenous resistance

As a student at Vancouver Community College studying music theory and composition, Edzi'u says they suffered from a form of writer's block after coming out of what they describe as an abusive relationship.

Edzi'u struggled to write lyrics and music and was looking for a solution. The Tahltan and Taku River Tlingit musician found inspiration in CDs their grandmother had given them that featured generations of their grandmother's stories and songs. 

"I started listening to them and pulling clips from them and I created my first album Kime Ani that way," Edzi'u told North by Northwest's Margaret Gallagher.

Edzi'u, who in addition to being a musician also works as a sound tech at CBC, later integrated sounds they collected from the world around them. Edzi'u found that "collecting bits of tape and audio was a way for me to explore my songwriting in a different way," they said. 

That approach influenced their latest work, Potlatch in the Box, a concept album that uses the framework of the potlatch to discuss colonialism and Indigenous resistance.

The track Warrior Song features clips of a relative from Dease Lake, a town in B.C.'s northern Interior.

"So what my practice is, is I'll do interviews with people and I'll take clips from those interviews and use them in the songs that I create," they said. 

Edzi'u says they rely on instinct to decide which interview clips to use. 

"I will record an interview with somebody and I'll listen to it and I'll just pull what feels right," they said. "I do a lot of my creating purely off of what I feel the ancestors in the room are telling me to do."

Another track, 2Spirit, explores the federal ban on potlatches and two-spirit identity.

A ban on the potlatch was legislated under an 1884 amendment to the 1876 Indian Act by the Canadian government, which came into effect in 1885, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia.

The legislation made it a criminal offence for anyone to participate in the potlatch, a gift-giving feast that was traditionally used to mark a variety of important milestones and occasions in West Coast tribes and customs, and as a way of celebrating life.

"I want people to hear the ways that our ancestors and our relatives had to be quiet behind a door," Edzi'u said. "And then the banging of the RCMP on the door when people would practise their culture in secret during the potlatch ban because they were afraid to be arrested and afraid that their sacred beings would be stolen from them."

Edzi'u says the song draws parallels between the potlatch ban and "the ways that we have really put away a lot of our knowledge and teachings around gender and sexuality within our culture."

Music reflects a range of influences

Edzi'u says their music draws from different genres and eras.

"I think I'm just kind of jamming the traditional songs of my grandmothers, '80s pop and rock ballads, country storytelling into this classical songwriting style," they said.

Country music also holds a special place in their heart, they say. Edzi'u has childhood memories of singing country songs to entertain aunties and uncles during long road trips between Whitehorse, where they attended school, and Dease Lake, one of their traditional territories.

Potlatch in the Box is the sum of those experiences and influences. 

"My ancestors traditionally they had a drum or they had their voice and they expressed what they saw and expressed what they felt that way, expressed what they wanted to teach everyone," they said.

"And that's what I'm doing, except I'm doing it with a computer and I'm doing it with my own voice and in my own style with all my influences."