Nuxalk Radio Station in the Bella Coola Valley has released a new album featuring songs in the Nuxalk language entirely.
"It was really fun and challenging," Nuskmata (Jacinda Mack), one of the 16 artists featured on the album, told superfastbody. "We are doing this for ourselves to celebrate our language and the stories that are from our culture. It is a really beautiful story-telling album."
Recorded entirely during three weeks in October 2024 in a temporary studio near the Bella Coola River, Nusximta is available on all major streaming platforms.
It features different genres and varying abilities when it comes to speaking It7nuxalkmc, Nuskmata said.
There are two eight-year-old girls singing a song about a dragonfly, another is a rap song about learning the language, she gave as examples of the variety.
Several of the artists sang on other people's tracts doing backup vocals, she added.
Nuskmata has three songs featured on the album.
One is a memorial song for her father Dayton Mack (Musq'lst). It is a traditional hand drum song she recorded live.
Her second song is a lullaby for her granddaughter that she wrote for a baby uplifting ceremony in the community when her granddaughter turned one-years-old.
"These songs are public to encourage our people to learn them and use them," she said.
Her third song, titled Ista Nts Ali, is an uplifting empowering dance song for Nuxalk women, Nuskmata explained.
"It talks about the supernatural feminine and where we come from. It's about our identity, it's about where we come from, our worth as Indigenous women and about seeing ourselves in a loving way, which is built into our language."
Songs on the album have a lot of depth, and when she was writing Ista Nts Ali, it became like poetry.
The song has a big story referenced within each verse.
"I'm just reminding women that we come from a powerful beautiful place."
When people listen they will hear sound effects from Nuxalk potlatches and dances like deer antlers, a log drum and a thunderstorm.
"They are cultural cues our people will recognize right away."
Nuskmata said they hope the album is inspiring for not only their community, but other communities to use music as a way of learning and celebrating Indigenous language.
Initially they wrote the songs, for the most part, in English before translating them.
"In the translation process the songs became more beautiful because there were words we had to shift or we had to use a better word in Nuxalk. When you translated it back it was a richer song."
Through that she appreciated how the Nuxalk language shapes her people.
"A word in my song is about reciprocal generosity and big teachings about that and reminders of how to be in the world. All the songs are very deep and very meaningful and I think that is because they are in our language."
It is the first album produced on the Nuxalk Radio Station label. It also celebrates the 10th anniversary of the station.
“For 10 years, the Nuxalk Radio Station has played Indigenous music in a variety of different languages from all over the world, but we have had little-to-no new Nuxalkmusic entirely in the Nuxalk language to broadcast on-air so we decided we needed to do something about it," noted Slts’lani (Banchi Hanuse), co-founder of the Nuxalk Radio Station and executive producer of the album in its liner notes.
"Nusximta features Nuxalk Radio hosts Tatala, Ximximana and Q’xta-also known as the local seasoned rapper Rollah Mack, Nuxalk Radio’s tech genius and radio host Qwaxw, Nuxalk land protector and musician Nuskmata (Jacinda Mack), Nuxalk chef Ximana (Nola Mack), Nuxalk language champion Staltmc Wilhpun, eight year-old girls Ts’ikwalhm and K’ipt who sang a song written by Umq’umklika, music prodigy Coastyn Hall on the piano and our token q’umskiwa (white guy) Randy Brook on wind instruments."
Montréal music producer David Hodges provided guidance and assistance and artist and multi-instrumentalist Milan André Boronell produced the album.
