Nick Krewen
Special to the Star
After two years of building its production library, Toronto-based Nagamo Publishing is ready to take on the world.
As the first exclusively Indigenous-created music production library and composer agency on the planet to serve media needs, Nigel Irwin, Nagamo Co-Creative Director and Composer says the shingle offers a lot of variety.
“Our bread and butter is contemporary music fused with traditional sounds, as well as straight traditional sounds – deep drum, hand drum, voices, the chants, vocals and even throat-singing,” Irwin explains.
“We hire composers from First Nations, Inuit and Métis, and the idea is that as we continue to grow – we’ve got composers all over Canada – but it’s just reaching those sectors in Canada and finding that indigenous talent.”
By definition, production music – also known as “library” or “stock” music – is usually employed as background or incidental music for a variety of purposes: film, television, video games, social media and advertising.
Production music peddles in mood and ambiance rather than song and although it can be melodic and catchy, it’s usually a fairly inexpensive alternative for productions that have tight budgets.
“The lofty idea at the centre of this is that we create a global indigenous music network,” says Irwin, who is Cree.
The idea originated from Oliver Johnson, president and co-founder of Toronto-based production house Bedtracks and concurrently Nagamo’s managing director.
“Bedtracks was finding that they were getting a lot of clients that were asking for indigenous-type music for their projects – and Oliver was finding it difficult to find authentic indigenous music,” Irwin explains.
“That was the industry for a while – they were using music that wasn’t coming from actual indigenous creators. So he partnered with (Toronto Film and Arts Institute) imagineNative and created the playlist version of what would eventually become Nagamo.
“It was called The Storytellers and I was brought in for that first round as a composer. The Storytellers was this boutique, niche playlist answering this need for indigenous production music and the response was great.”
Irwin said the CBC began using The Storytellers for some of their productions almost immediately, as did some independent production companies and filmmakers.
Eventually, the Winnipeg-based Aboriginal People’s Television Network (APTN) heard about the offshoot, purchased the company, renamed it and established Nagamo Publishing.
In 2019, APTN established the Ottawa-based Dadan Sivunivut as a new independent holding company, placing a number of new ventures and subsidiaries under its umbrella, including Nagamo Publishing and a pending record company called red music rising.
So far, Irwin said Nagamo has built up a production library of 300 tracks and intends to add another 200 over the next few years.
“It’s growing all the time as we’re meeting new composers that we’re commissioning.”
Corporate clients that have utilized Nagamo’s production library range from Corus to Ontario Creates to The Toronto Zoo, although some of the more identifiable examples include uses for the trailer of the recent CBC TV series Trickster and as the theme for CBC Radio’s “Unreserved” show.
Irwin says Nagamo has drawn inquiries from all over the world.
“We’re already finding interest in the States and connecting with creators out there,” he notes. “Our initial mandate was just to focus on Canada and get it launched here. As we continue to grow, we’ve had chats with folks in New Zealand, Australia and England – although the indigenous thing isn’t quite relevant there – there is a demand for it.
“These stories have been told all over the world – indigenous is not exclusive to Canada. Each country technically has an indigenous population. So, it’s exciting to connect with all those sectors and find the variables and the commonality and find ways to collaborate.”
But Irwin also maintains that Nagamo won’t stray from its core.
“It will remain indigenous. That’s the benchmark that we’re operating under.”
Irwin is the first to admit that the pandemic has played havoc with travel plans and reaching out in person to clients, the way he prefers to do business.
“Just before COVID happened I was at a conference in New Orleans for producers of non-scripted film and we had a lot of those on the docket that we were heading out to.
“Obviously, the way I like to network is to meet people, attend events and shake people’s hands. It builds trust and I think that’s important when addressing and approaching indigenous communities. They want to know who you are. They don’t want to give up precious music that’s really close to them without really getting the sense that you’re someone that they can trust.
“So, it’s a bit of a hill to climb to make those connections via e-mail, webcam, Zoom – whatever you need to do – we’ve had to pivot to bring studios in remotely.”
But Nagamo doesn’t just function as a production music library; it also serves as an agency for composers, including such contributors as Chippewa Travelers, David Maracle, Silla, Wolf Saga, Grayson Gritt and Cris Derksen among others.
“With all these artists and composers, if people want to reach out and meet with them directly, we can facilitate that interaction as well,” says Irwin.
One of Nagamo’s more prominent composer is David Strickland, who worked on the early Drake albums Thank Me Later, Nothing Was The Same and Take Care and has also done some engineering with Wu-Tang Clan members Method Man and Redman.
“David Strickland was in the Storytellers at the beginning and his stuff is great – it’s very percussive, high energy and that stuff gets remixed a lot,” says Irwin. “His footprint is certainly in there.”
For his part, Strickland says he found it to be a good experience.
“I was interested because I always wanted to do scoring kind of stuff for radio, TV, background stuff.
“They have traditional artists that they use and they gave me access to their files so I could incorporate stuff. I infused some traditional stuff into hip-hop or trap – I put them together.”
Strickland says the importance of Nagamo to the overall music community is the expansion of perception.
“Not only does it give Native musicians an outlet and a different way to make money on the side, but some people don’t even consider this is something, like scoring, we could do.”
Irwin says Nagamo want to reach out to as many indigenous creatives as possible.
‘We want to reach more producers, more creators, more storytellers in whatever fashion that looks like, primarily film and television, but we’ve been talking to folks in theatre, on YouTube and social media.
“We also want to reach more performers, composers and artists of the Indigenous hubs in Canada. If they get wind of it, we’d love to hear from them – and we just feel like we’re on a trajectory as a country and the culture where indigenous voices are becoming prominent again, and people want to hear these stories and want to hear authenticity and something new.
“As this wave continues, we just want to be that place where people can find that pre-cleared indigenous music.”