JUNO AWARD NOMINATED ARTIST, TERRY UYARAK, RETURNS WITH NEW LP, UNNUAQ, OUT TOMORROW JUNE 21, 2023 VIA AAKULUK MUSIC
LISTEN / SHARE “UNNUAQ” HERE
PRE-SAVE UNNUAQ HERE
Photo Credit : Andrew Morrison // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Tomorrow, celebrated songwriter Terry Uyarak will release his new album, UNNUAQ, via Aakuluk Music. Today, he’s given us one more taste with the title track from the LP, “Unnuaq”. “Translated ‘unnuaq’ means ‘night’, we all go through the night each day,” says Uyarak. “For some, they go through a tough time every now and then because of parents or guardians drinking overboard and getting to a not fun night, and even if you aren’t drinking and especially as a child. This is a story of a daughter’s perspective towards her parent drinking so she has no choice to go through the night, it will not be dark forever, I will not stop loving you, you are not going to find ‘the enlightenment’ in others, same as you will not find greener grass. The second verse translates to father's perspective towards getting better in his life after realizing that he has been looking for something that had been there all along - the love of his family. A lot of people have been through this growing up so I wanted to write about it. There is still a lot of healing to be done and the pain of the history can sometimes come out in too much drinking. The healing is happening and music can be very important in those processes. So many of my friends helped me to make this song wonderful, including the QIA Youth Leadership conference that helped to write the second verse.”
LISTEN / SHARE “UNNUAQ” HERE
PRE-SAVE UNNUAQ HERE
MORE ABOUT UNNUAQ
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.
Coming on the heels of 2022’s ATIILU! EP, a reworking of songs from his JUNO Award-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.
LISTEN / SHARE “INUUQATIGI&ARUKKI” HERE
BUY / STREAM “INUUQATIGI&ARUKKI” HERE
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.”
WATCH / SHARE “NUTARAULLUNGA” HERE
BUY / STREAM “ “NUTARAULLUNGA” HERE
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.”
WATCH / SHARE “QAIGI” HERE
BUY / STREAM “QAIGI” HERE
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.”
PRE-ORDER UNNUAQ HERE
01 Qaigi
02 Nutaraullunga
03 Inuuqatigi&arukki
04 Ulluq Nutaaq
05 Unnuaq
06 Tisijumut
07 Puigujjaangitagi
08 Tuurngaq
09 Sivummut