There are many black marks on the history of Prince George - the kind of black marks that show ethnic diversity alive and well dating back almost as far as offshore contact. Names like James Douglas, John Robert Giscome and Henry McDame date back prior to the existence of any colonial town in this region.
Our more recent history of Afro-Caribbean heritage finding a home in this area include sports figures like Ken Larsen, religious leaders like Lance Morgan, academics like Israel Prabhudass and artists like Granville Johnson come easily to mind.
This region has a new name climbing the international public consciousness. Blues singer Ndidi Onukwulu has established her spotlight on stages the world over, living in places like Paris, New York, Toronto, L.A. and Vancouver in support of her acclaimed music career.
But her childhood was spent in nearby Burns Lake.
She is a Maple Blues Award winner, She was nominated for Juno Awards in 2009 and 2015, had concerts broadcast nationally on CBC Radio, has collaborated with many stars of the music industry (Madagascar Slim, Jane Bunnett, Jim Byrnes, Roy Forbes, Alex Cuba, etc.), and continues to grow as a musical force.
As Black History Month opens, so, too, does the next phase of Onukwulu's recording career. This past week she released her latest single, a pounding soul-rocker (think Serena Ryder or One Republic) called Hands High. It is the first flare from her upcoming album These Days coming out March 16.
The song is an anthem for hitting the reset button to modern times and getting the downward political spiral under control again. In a way, it's about basing our next moves as a society on the small-town values she learned in Burns Lake and Golden, the two towns most prominent in her childhood.
"I think growing up in small town Canada was awful in so many ways and wonderful in so many ways," she said, appreciating things that insisted upon her young life like reading, playing in the woods, having space away from other people. "I think, in terms of becoming a creative adult, it really formed me. Because I had to create my own stories. No one else was going to entertain me. And it helped me know that I was a very small part of a much larger and more powerful organism, and I have to respect it constantly."
That mentality was enhanced by the extraordinary amount of changing addresses she has done as an adult. She has lived for prolonged periods in Europe and in the United States but makes no ambiguities about her attachment to Canada and its unique culture. She has never travelled out of shiftlessness, she said, always purposeful and that's how she regards Canada's place in amongst the other cultures in which she has been immersed.
"Music brings me everywhere. I don't really go anywhere unless it is for a creative purpose," she said. "We are an interesting people if you take the time to know us, not just have these blanket assumptions like 'you're so nice' and 'healthcare' and 'there's no brown people up there' and these weird illusions people have of Canada. We are a really interesting culture and even in our small towns across the board, there are tidbits of culture and nature and people are just interesting."
She is performing an increasing amount of country music, lately, to go along with her blues base. She has reached into many genres over the years, including electronica, rock and other genres, and welded them into her amalgamated personal presentation. The country and blues may seem like a stretch to some, but to her it is just another sign of being a culturally awake Canadian. This is where boundaries between people and subcultures are weaker and differences used as a strength instead of a division.
"I love acoustic blues and I love acoustic country, I love classic blues and I love classic country," she said. "And these two musics are actually the same. The origins are the same, just one group of people was concentrated in the mountains and one group was concentrated in the delta. The ethnicity thing (country seen in America especially as a white genre and the blues as a black genre) came later during a different era in America. Ultimately it was just poor people - poor people playing music to give themselves relief from crappy situations. This was their solace. All the stories were the same (inside the songs). It had none of the romanticism of pop and R&B that came later, even new country today. It's all kind of bubblegum. But the grittier stuff - that's something else."
She finds herself tuning in to music that has a rootsier vibe, or a clearer source of its substance, but that sometimes includes new and urban sounds. She lists Kendrick Lamar, D'Angelo and Alabama Shakes as acts in the here and now that she likes to groove to. The common denominator for her and those acts, she said, was the foundational intelligence behind their songs. They compose for reasons that go beyond scoring a hit.
"I think every human being plays with stardust, just not everyone is awake to their potential (or has the same access to resources)," she said. "As much as I think we humans are just so dumb, we are also such magical creatures if we actualize our potential and come from a place of honesty and integrity and fairness. I think everyone can sing, I think everyone can write, I really do believe we all have these powers of creativity. For some people they are more heightened, but we all have the same elements, we just don't play with them in the same way."
That goes for women as well as men. She is deliberate about that point. Onukwulu was one of the star-power females featured in the new documentary Play Your Gender produced and hosted by award winning B.C. rapper-singer-poet Kinnie Starr. It is a long, hard look at the male dominance of the music business.
"For women in the music industry, it's been a lot rougher on us than most people realize," Onukwulu said. "People don't want to hear a grown woman talk about grown woman things, and when they do, it's got to be coloured with all kinds of slang and what-have-you. I don't adhere to it at all."
Adding to the impact of their personal truths is the Aboriginal heritage of Starr and the black background of Onukwulu. Each has made a habit of composing works of sonic art that demonstrate the ease with which we can cross those faux borders.
