Tukaluguti

For years, I held up Inuit accordion music as the least-known folk music in the world. There were very few widely distributed releases, and YouTube only started featuring videos of the tradition relatively recently. For all the scholarly treatises on Inuit music, accordion music rarely rates more than a dismissive sentence. And yet Inuit in Canada love the instrument, and there’s a rich history that dates back to encounters with Scottish whalers. So, how lovely it is to have a full album of Inuit accordion music from Nunavik accordionist Eva Deer, played almost non-stop so that the dancing never has to halt, just as it would be performed in a traditional Inuit Christmas party. In these holiday square dances, the game is to wear out the accordionist in marathon sessions. Deer mirrors that here with a 16-track album with few – or abrupt – breaks between tunes. Many tracks are just numbered rather than titled, really; she just goes and goes, the drums heavy and fast. It’s unusual sounding and a precious look at a beautiful music tradition almost entirely unknown outside Inuit communities.