JUNO Award-winning musician and award-winning Anishinaabe storyteller co-write new single
By Rick Garrick
HAMILTON — JUNO Award-winning musician Tom Wilson co-wrote his recently released new single, We Live In Dreams, with Fort William’s Tanya Talaga for her documentary film, Ni-Naadamaadiz: Red Power Rising.
“I was approached by Tanya and director Shane Belcourt to do the music for the film,” Wilson says, noting that he works with his son Thompson Wilson on music for films under his Mohawk name, Tehoháhake. “The music we make for films is the music that you never hear, but you would miss it if it wasn’t there. I feel that we successfully did that for this film, but as we were completing the music and lining it up with the movie, I felt that the film deserved a real song, something that expressed the power within us all that can’t be reached, and it can’t be altered, and it can’t be abused.”
Talaga’s documentary film, which brings to light a little-known story of a youth-led Indigenous land reclamation at Anicinabe Park in Kenora in 1974, premiered at the 50th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), which ran from September 4-14.
“We Live In Dreams is the power that that movement had to be able to form the first land back movement here on Turtle Island,” Wilson says. “I wrote the song for the film, but I didn’t feel that the lyrics were exactly what was needed and didn’t grace the importance of what was going on up on the screen. So I actually texted Tanya, who was over at the Cannes Film Festival, and said, ‘I need you to write these lyrics.’”
Wilson says Talaga “sketched out a bunch of ideas” for him while she was flying back from Cannes.
“And that’s how we ended up with the song, which I think, without her contribution, it would have been just another song,” Wilson says. “Now I feel that it’s something that’s important and beyond me now.”
Talaga, award-winning journalist, author, and filmmaker, says she had never written a song before Wilson asked her for some help with the lyrics.
“It was like writing poetry,” Talaga says, noting that the late Lee Maracle had told her that she needed to write poetry. “So I gave it a try with this song. Tom just asked me for a bit of help, he said, ‘You know, there’s just something missing here, will you take a look at it?’”
Talaga says she feels that she just added some words to the song.
“It’s wild to do something and then hear your words to music,” Talaga says. “Tom’s music is so beautiful, it’s soulful, you could feel his spirit. On a broader sense, when we were doing the film, we knew that we just had to have Tom score the entire thing, and he did — it’s stunning, and the song, We Live In Dreams, really just says it all.”
Wilson says Belcourt had also previously directed the Beautiful Scars documentary film, a point-of-view story about his upbringing, music career, and discovery of his Mohawk identity.
“He’s as fierce as Tanya is,” Wilson says. “It’s hard not to be inspired by Shane Belcourt and Tanya, what a great combination of people to be involved in.”
Wilson says he first got interested in music about 50 years ago.
“I started playing music because it was the only thing that made sense to me,” Wilson says. “When I go to writing music, or writing books, or putting art exhibits together, at the moment that I’m doing that it’s the only thing that makes sense to me, too. I figured out at a young age that I wanted to be a communicator.”
Wilson says he is currently finishing his second book for Penguin Random House.