Yukon's Dennis Shorty picks 5 songs that stir his memories, both happy and sad
From Ross River dance parties to camping with his family, music has been there for Dennis Shorty
This story is a part of a web series called Music that Matters with CBC Yukon's Airplay host Dave White. Dave sits down with Yukoners to talk about five pieces of music that inspire them.
Music has been a big part of Kaska Dena artist Dennis Shorty's life, through the good times and bad.
So when we asked the Ross River-based artist if he wanted to be part of our Music That Matters feature, Shorty decided he should reflect the role music has played in every aspect of his life.
"Some songs, they're good memories," he said. "Some are kind of sad, too. But in the end, it's good, because I'm here."
His first choice was Fess Parker's The Ballad Of Davy Crockett, and it certainly brought back memories of a difficult time.
"As a residential school survivor, that's a song we always used to hear when we went to bed," he said.
"Sometimes I'd cry myself to sleep and think, 'Man, I want to go home, I want to walk out that door and walk away.' But as a five-year-old, that's hard to do.
"So it's bad, but it's also good in a way because I'm here, healing through music, writing songs in my Dena language, doing artwork. That's my healing path."
Shorty's next pick was a classic piece of early rock, Rhythm Of The Rain by the Cascades.
It reminds Shorty of camping trips he used to take with his family in the Anvil Range near Faro. Shorty said he used to pack around a radio on those trips and set it up at night. His father would get the aerial pointed in just the right direction and music would fill the tiny speaker.
"I would lay in bed and I could see the mountains, sometimes it would be raining, and that song would come on. My sisters and my brothers are around the campfire and that song reminds me of that."
Paul McCartney's Band On The Run brought back happier memories for Shorty.
"We used to have a dance here in Ross a long time ago and they had a band come in from Watson Lake, I think it was a high school band, and they would play that song," he recalled.
"Dad and Mom went up on the dance floor and start dancing, but in a traditional Dena dance. Mom and Dad just givin' 'er."
Shorty's fourth choice, Elvis Presley's version of Blue Suede Shoes, also brought back happy memories of home.
"After they had that trading post in Ross, they put in a general store and these guys brought in a juke box," he said.
"I remember my brother Frank all had the sideburns and the haircut. They were dancing to Elvis with their gumboots rolled down and their hats and their blue jeans, doing the twist and everything ... good memories of my brothers and sisters."
Shorty chose a classic piece of country as his final selection — Crazy, by his mother's favourite singer, Patsy Cline — and the memories invoked by this piece of music are definitely bittersweet.
Shorty's mother was murdered in 1992, so he dedicated the song to all the missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. Hearing the song is painful, but Shorty said it's an important part of his healing journey.
"I finally heard myself laugh about a year ago," he said. "We lost that as a people. A long time ago, we used to sit around the campfire and laugh.
"That's what I want to bring back, through our language, tell the stories about people sitting around the campfire ... that's what picking this song is about, for Mom."