Yellowknife’s Miranda Currie will release her second children’s album with a public concert at the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre on May 15, featuring interactive songs.
Eleven years ago, when Currie suffered a brain injury, she found herself healing through children’s music. Today, she says she is doing “incredibly” better and is ready to celebrate with music.
Currie is gearing up for the release of Tickling the Taiga, an interactive northern Indigenous children’s album that includes genres like hip-hop, rock n’ roll, jazz and electronica.
Currie says her goal is “to build a really solid foundation with a variety of music for kids,” and hopes children will listen and find genres they like and can explore with their parents.
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Language played a crucial role in inspiring the album.
“We need our young people to speak the Wıı̀lıı̀deh language so that the stories and the way people connect with the land is not lost,” Currie told Cabin Radio.
“I try to be an advocate with that through my music,” she said. “It started out that way where I was working with Elders in schools to teach language through music.”
Tickling the Taiga features both Wıı̀lıı̀deh and Cree. Currie hopes young listeners will learn Indigenous languages through call-and-response and interactive singing.
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“I really like to think that the ancestors of this land are looking down on us and they’re smiling,” she said, “because they’re [thinking]: these little people are singing the language!”
Currie says the album will be best-suited to children aged three to nine. She hopes it attracts both northern residents who can relate to songs such as Recess in the Dark as well as southern Canadians interested in learning about northern life.
The album’s public release will take place at NACC and feature a costume change for every genre. Currie will be joined on-stage by the Birchbark Boys, her backing band.
Ticket can be purchased from NACC’s website.
