New Music: Gord Downie - Introduce Yerself

It has been a little over a week since Gord Downie, singer for The Tragically Hip, died. Every Canadian knew it was going to happen, probably sooner than later, but it came as a surprise anyways, and it hurt. The band announced about 1-1/2 years ago that Gord had brain cancer, and then they proceeded to release their final album "Man Machine Poem" and plan a final across Canada tour, to give their fans what they wanted most, a chance to say thank you and goodbye.

I was introduced to The Hip when they released their third album "Fully Completely". I instantly was hooked and have been ever since. Throughout their career they have released 13 albums, some better than others but all of them completely Canadian. That was the bands gift to us, they made music that told us about ourselves, that celebrated what it means to be Canadian, but this post isn't about The Hip. 

In between Hip albums, Gord Downie occasionally made a solo album, 6 in all. The last two "Secret Path" and "Introduce Yerself" were recorded since announcing that he had cancer. Now I have listened to all of his solo albums and they are very different than any Hip album, and I'll admit not really my style. I do, however, love that in his dying moments he wanted to accomplish two things:

With Secret Path, Gord wanted to bring attention to the Canadian Residential School System and more specifically to Chanie Wenjack, a young First Nations boy who died in 1966 while trying to escape from one of the schools. 

“The residential school system harmed Indigenous children significantly by removing them from their families, depriving them of their ancestral languages, exposing many of them to physical and sexual abuse, and forcibly enfranchising them. Disconnected from their families and culture and forced to speak English or French, students who attended the residential school system often graduated unable to fit into either their communities or Canadian society. It ultimately proved successful in disrupting the transmission of Indigenous practices and beliefs across generations. The legacy of the system has been linked to an increased prevalence of post-traumatic stress, alcoholism, substance abuse, and suicide, which persist within Indigenous communities.”

I have been listening to this album, released today, all morning. Consisting of 23 songs, each one is dedicated to someone in Gord's life. Whether Gord was their son, brother, husband, father, band mate or friend, he chose this as his goodbye. I don't know who each song is about but hopefully whoever they are they know, and they know, like all Canadians, that Gord gave all that he had to his music, to his family and friends, to his country. He wanted us all to be entertained, but also to know a little bit more about our heritage and history, even if sometimes it is a little bit ugly. 

So thank you Gord for giving us part of yerself. For holding Canada up to a light and showing both the great and the bad. Thank you for being a great example of a Canadian.