Leela Gilday: Thoughts on her Hillside Festival debut

By Will McGuirk

Born and raised in the Northwest Territories, Leela Gilday writes about the people and the land that created her. The power in her voice conveys the depth of her feelings of love and life in a rugged environment and vibrant culture, as if it comes straight from that earth. Leela’s family is from Délįne on the shore of Great Bear Lake and her rich vocals dance across the rhythmic beats of traditional Dene drumming as smoothly as a bass line onstage the largest venues in the country.

Leela’s fifth album "North Star Calling", released in fall of 2019, won the Indigenous Artist of the Year JUNO Award 2021.

Leela Gilday - “I have never played Hillside. I am really excited to play at the festival as I have heard many great things about it! I am bringing my full band and this last couple of months have been the first time back on the road since Covid. I am grateful to be able to share some of my new Dene language songs with the band.

Mahsi Cho”

Hillside tickets here ->

Slowcity.ca Open Mic with Sameer Cash, Katie Pruitt, Troy Junker, Juke Ross, Gold Star Gold Star, Leela Gilday, Soccer Mommy, Daysormay

By Will McGuirk

Watched a piece today on art galleries opening. Options included drive-thru and route markers. Most of these solutions seemed geared to getting numbers into the gallery and had little to do with the focus of a gallery which is, or at least should be, the artist and the art. In some of the galleries people were giving a certain amount of time and then had to move on. What a ridiculous and disrespectful notion! One needs time with art, the best art demands time, and rewards the time spent. One can read a novel several times over a lifetime and get something different each time. Art does that, art transcends time. Any gallery which puts a time limit on the experience of art is away in the before times and those times and infrastructures gave a platform for this Covid-19 virus. The same infrastructures will not offer us a way out. What will will be the creativity and invention and ingenuity of the artist. Rather than limiting exposure to art we should be maximizing it in all ways possibles. Art is the roadway we need to take to get out.

“With the rest of the world tucked under their covers endlessly scanning the news, we were present for the shift in real life, minute by minute. It all seemed so surreal, it was hard to relate to. Hard not to joke about. That night, we were all living in the active transition from one world to the next, we could feel it, it felt so close, yet so large and so out of reach.” - Sameer Cash

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“To me, Pride Month is all about celebrating self-love. This year, we might not have the parties or parades, but it’s never really been about that. ‘Pride’ is a feeling that we find within ourselves. It’s a sigh of relief that we don’t have to hide anymore or alter our personality or preferences in order to make a Cisgender society more comfortable. So, when straight people ask, ‘Why don’t we have straight pride?’ I always respond with, ‘because society never told you to be ashamed.’” - Katie Pruitt

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Leela Gilday · Giants

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Slowcity.ca Open Mic with Whoop-Szo, Leela Gilday, Jom Comyn, Girl Band, Moonchild and Young Clancy

By Will McGuirk

There are two very chunky thrash pandas scaling the neighbour’s fence. They are slow and hang on the wood like saggy bags filled with liquid. They take one backward glance, their eyes flash in the streetlight, before disappearing down the other side. I can hear their nails clawing at the splintering planks. It is garbage night. I wonder where the predators are.

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Slowcity Open Mic - 'Was that the sun edition?' - with Leela Gilday, Ponytails, Del Barber, Old Man Luedecke, Operators and Rhye

It just takes one sunny sunny day to dispel all the winter grumpiness, doesn’t it. So here we are at that wonderful time between frost and flies. Take advantage and get outside as you much as you can.

Its been some time, five years, since Leela Gilday issued an album but her new album, ‘North Star Calling’ is coming out this year and the single “K’eintah Natse Ju” has just been released.

In a press release Gilday says the track is “about the legacy of colonization and its impact on our (Indigenous) family relationships- part of what happened in residential school was the dismantling of the Indigenous family structure. This was intentional- if you take away children from their families you deprive them of the love and cultural traditional values that growing up in a loving home gives to them. This song is about some of those relationships. Part of this was inspired by the tragic deaths of Colton Boushie and Tina Fontaine." Leela will be at Hugh’s Room in Toronto May 10.

Also on the mic today we have Ponytails, Del Barber, Old Man Luedecke, Operators and Rhye.

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