I wanted to share an enthralling new album I  just listened during my quiet hour this afternoon. Jeremy Dutcher, an experimental artist from Canada has created some deeply haunting and beautiful music in his new record ‘”Wolastoqiyik  Lintuwakonawa,” unlike any music I recall hearing.

In this award-winning album, Dutcher fuses traditional Wolastoquyik melodies with classical compositions and electronic music.

The music was inspired by Dutcher’s community, the Tobique First Nation in New Brunswick, Canada.

Dutcher has talked about how music – like writing and art – is a tie to community, identity and language. There are fewer than 100 speakers of Wolostoqey, an Algonquian First Nation language, alive today.

The tribe elders are deeply moved by the success of this album, they believe the spirits of the tribe are bringing the old music back to life. But there is nothing old about Dutcher’s brilliant melding of the old and the new.

He is bringing this music, nearly lost,  back to life. The singers in the tribe were called “Two Spirits,” and travelers looked for Two Spirit singers wherever they went.

I first heard music from this album today on NPR’s Inside Edition, then downloaded it on Apple Music. I’m going to spend an hour with it late tonight, sitting by a fire during an expected winter storm.