Abstracts
Résumé
Cris Derksen est violoncelliste, vocaliste, créatrice de rythmes et compositrice, travaillant à la croisée des genres et en opposition à leurs limites. Cet essai examine son premier grand projet orchestral, Orchestral Powwow (2015), ainsi que son plus récent, Controlled Burn (2023). Ces deux oeuvres orchestrales éclairent les identités créatives et culturelles de Derksen en tant que violoncelliste autochtone formée à la musique classique, avec une longue expérience de l’improvisation, du looping et de la collaboration. Elles reflètent également trois qualités fondamentales de ses identités et de son approche compositionnelle : l’adaptation, la flexibilité et la transformation.
Ces qualités ne se contentent pas d’éclairer l’écriture orchestrale de Derksen au cours de la dernière décennie : elles rappellent également des vérités cruciales sur l’autochtoneité en général. Comme l’expliquent Deloria (2004) et d’autres, notamment Senungetuk (2019), l’adaptation, la flexibilité et la transformation sont au coeur des visions du monde et des traditions autochtones. Ces deux oeuvres de Derksen démontrent la puissance des territoires sonores souverains autochtones et offrent aux auditeurs non autochtones une invitation à écouter, apprendre et agir en solidarité anticoloniale.
Mots-clés :
- orchestre,
- Cris Derksen,
- autochtone,
- anti-colonial,
- souveraineté
Abstract
Cris Derksen is a cellist, vocalist, beat-maker, and composer working across and against genre boundaries. This essay examines Derksen’s first large-scale orchestral project, Orchestral Powwow (2015), and her most recent, Controlled Burn (2023). These two orchestral projects illuminate Derksen’s creative and cultural identities as a classically trained Indigenous cellist with a long performance history of improvisation, looping, and collaboration. They also reflect three important qualities of Derksen’s identity(ies) and compositional approach: adaptation, flexibility, and transformation. These qualities not only clarify Derksen’s orchestral writing in the last almost decade. They also offer crucial reminders about Indigeneity more broadly: that Indigenous individuals, communities, nations, and their worldviews and cultural practices are not fixed. Rather, as Deloria (2004) and others (Senungetuk 2019) explain, adaptation, flexibility, and transformation are central to Indigenous worldviews and traditions. These two works by Derksen demonstrate the power of Indigenous sovereign sonic territories, and they offer non-Indigenous listeners an invitation to listen, learn, and act in anti-colonial solidarity.
Keywords:
- orchestra,
- Cris Derksen,
- Indigenous,
- anti-colonial,
- sovereignty
Appendices
Bibliographie
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