Leela Gilday, photo by Pat Kane
Songs, Stories and Sovereignty: The Strength of Indigenous Voices and Community
Join us for a conversation with singer/songwriter Leelay Gilday, Banff Centre alumna, former program faculty, and featured artist. Throughout her career she has integrated her Dene language into her music to challenge the norms of mainstream music trends and styles. Even as her music has reached acclaim across the country and beyond, Gilday has always represented the Far North fiercely and proudly.
A passionate singer/songwriter and soulful performer, Leela Gilday has a voice that comes straight from the heart. Confessing her stories to her audiences with a gutsy voice and open stage presence, Gilday weaves her experiences as a northerner, a member of the Dene nation, and a traveler into a beautiful world that transports the listener. In this talk, Leela Gilday will share stories and songs from her Dene nation, emphasizing the unique importance of Indigenous voices and communities in the context of our world in crisis. She will also talk about the work of helping to build an Indigenous music ecosystem.
Facilitated by Janine Windolph, Director of Indigenous Arts at Banff Centre, the session includes a presentation by Gilday, followed by a discussion and a Q&A. This conversation will be live-streamed and recorded, with the recording shared following the event. Sessions may include sharing experiences and asking difficult questions.
About the Decolonizing the Narrative Conversation Series
The Decolonizing the Narrative Conversation Series is a bi-monthly conversation session inviting leading Indigenous Art creators to discuss their practices and processes. The series engages an Indigenous lens across various art forms, including Literary Arts, Film and Media Arts, Digital Media, Visual Arts, and Performing Arts such as Theatre, Dance, and Music. These sessions offer a space to explore and deepen your understanding of how Indigenous artists use their disciplines as tools to decolonize artistic processes and creation.
About Leela Gilday
Leela Gilday
If you’re from the North, Leela Gilday’s music is home. If you’ve never been, it will take you there. Born and raised in the Northwest Territories, she 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. And she has played them all.
Leela has toured festivals and concert halls with her four-piece band through every province and territory in Canada. She has played in the United States, Greenland, Denmark, and New Zealand, and recently embarked on an ambitious European tour. Her live shows are where she connects with fans who have followed her on a 20-year career and where new fans are born. She reaches into their hearts and feels the energy of every person in front of her as she guides them on a journey through song and experience. She believes music has an inexplicable effect on people. It is a place where she can share light and dark and the most vulnerable moments, with a clarity and genuine purpose that reassures her listeners through every word. She is a storyteller, and through this, reflects the world onto itself.
Leela’s fifth album “North Star Calling” won the 2021 Juno Award for Indigenous Artist/Group of the Year, a Canadian Folk Music Award for Indigenous Songwriter of the Year, and Roots Album of the Year at the Summer Solstice Indigenous Music Awards. It is more raw, more intimate and more Leela than anything you’ve heard from her before.