Most people’s concept of night and day is relative to where they find themselves in the world. For Terry Uyarak, who calls the hamlet of Igloolik, Nunavut home, day and night is less about a twenty-four-hour clock and more about a lifetime’s cycle of experiences. Once again, singer-songwriter and multi-disciplinary artist Uyarak mines his experiences for the celebratory and therapeutic music on his second album, UNNUAQ (which translates to ‘Night’ in English). Coming on the heels of 2022’s ATIILU! EP (a reworking of songs from his Juno-nominated 2020 debut album, Nunarjua Isulinginniani), UNNUAQ is deeply rooted in Uyarak’s Inuit heritage and culture but is also a record reflecting on what it means to be an Indigenous person in the 21st century.

UNNUAQ’s stirring and stunning title track is one of Uyarak’s personal favourites, both because of the friends and collaborators with whom he worked and the emotional drama at its lyrical core. “The first verse is a daughter’s perspective towards her father, who drinks often,” he explains. Accompanied by the song’s redemptive musical arrangement, she expresses profound empathy, understanding, and unabiding love for her father, whom we hear in the second verse. He’s remorseful about the pain he’s caused her and admits he could not provide her with the love and protection she needed. In the end, Uyarak says, the father and daughter’s song is a pledge to one another: “We have no choice but to go through this night, but the sun will reappear, eventually, and I will not stop loving you, and I will always be your light.”

Another song deeply connected to Uyarak’s heart is “Nutaraullunga” (which translates to “When I was a kid”), inspired by memories of months-long traditional hunting trips in the summer with his family. “It was always the same,” he says of these expeditions, travelling over 60 kilometres north of Igloolik looking for seals, Arctic char, caribou, and walruses. “[The trips] were so normal for us that we didn’t even think that we had a choice not to go; it was a super normal thing,” he recalls fondly. “Since we lost our grandmother,” he notes, “we are not doing that anymore; it’s just a memory now.” Uyarak describes the music of UNNUAQ as “healing songs.” They connect the husband, father, and artist he’s become in the present to the young boy he was when he heard the “forbidden” folk songs of his ancestors for the first time. These songs, prohibited and suppressed by the church, began to reemerge during his youth. At a young age, it was clear to Uyarak the healing power these songs possessed. So much so that in the course of creating new music, Uyarak is mindful of its future legacy and the memories his songs will evoke when he’s older, “sitting in the patio [with his friends and collaborators] and just listening back and thinking, ‘Wow, we made good memories.’”

Memories, in turn, make for good music and storytelling. You do not have to understand Uyarak’s language to comprehend his stories. You only need to open your heart and emotions to feel what he’s communicating through his world-weary and lived-in voice. On UNNUAQ, melodies tell the story as much as the lyrics. The texture and ambiance of the arrangements convey the landscape and the environment more vividly than any prose. Music may not be a medium that the self-taught Uyarak formally studied. Still, he has an instinctual command of the art form. His songs genuinely express the values his community instilled in him and Uyarak’s ever-optimistic attitude and belief that “Life makes good sense when you are doing things you love.”

By Jim Di Gioia