Aysanabee is back with a new sound
Today, Aysanabee drops his sophomore album, Edge Of The Earth. The Indigenous singer-songwriter burst onto the scene in 2022 with Watin, an album that was inspired by his grandfather's stories and won him two Juno Awards.
On Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks with music journalist Emilie Hanskamp, Anishinaabe scholar Riley Yesno and Anishinaabe/Mohawk writer and producer Kim Wheeler about Aysanabee's new album and how it differs from his first one.
We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion about new albums from both Bambii and Haim, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.
WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube:
Elamin: Kim, do you want to tell the story of the first record? Because I feel like Watin kind of came out of nowhere and then just took the music scene by storm a little bit.
Kim: Yeah, absolutely. He made this incredible record where he sat down and he had conversations with his grandfather. And it was during COVID and he recorded those conversations. Then he used them to weave a story throughout his first album, Watin, which is named after his grandfather. And actually, Aysanabee is also named after his grandfather. He took his grandfather's name [instead of] his colonial name, which is Evan, but now he performs as Aysanabee.
Yeah, it was such an incredible album. That was the album that got him shortlisted for Polaris. And when you have an album like that, every single album afterwards, you anticipate, right? You're like, "What's he gonna do next? What's he going to do next?" And then with this album, he's given us a new sound.
Elamin: This idea of making a record that is entirely around his grandfather's story, his grandfather's experience in residential schools, that forms the narrative framework of that record. When you get to this new album, Emily, is there a conceptual framework to this record? Or is he like, "Man, let's talk about love?"
Emily: If his first album was his grandfather's story, his second was more so a breakup album, which is about you, but it's largely about a relationship, maybe the other person who you were in that relationship. I think this album [is] most inward and about himself. You think of [the words] "edge of the earth," you kind of picture yourself at the edge of this cliff, your toes hanging over, you think of these leaps of faith that you take, and I think it's taking stock of the leaps he's taken, the losses that have been both for and against his will, the people he's lost. There's a song about losing his grandfather, there are songs about heartbreak and relationships falling apart, there are songs about love. So I really think it is actually his most personal in terms of how inward it is. I think conceptually that's where he's landing here.
WATCH | "Home" Live at Orange Lounge:
Elamin: Riley, when you listen to this record, what's the aspect that's most jumping out at you?
Riley: I went and read the write-up that you did, Emily, in The Star, about him [Aysanabee], and he mentions in it to you that he took inspiration in his earliest years from Bob Marley and all of these things. I started to smile because when I lived on the rez, we had just cassette tapes all over the place. And a fun fact is that every Native I've ever met loves Johnny Cash, they love Bob Marley, they love that timbre of the voice. I can hear that in the way that he [Aysanabee] sings and you can hear it on this album. And so while it's not necessarily as explicitly "about Indigenous topics," like residential schools with his grandfather in the first one, to me it is so Native still in that connection to the music that Native people love. And I really feel that when I listen to it.
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