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Music under the midnight sun
The Dawson City Music Festival blends small-town
charm with big-time talent for a dizzying weekend dance party in
Klondike country
 Story
and photography by Margo Pfeiff
On a sunny Friday afternoon in July, I join an audience sprawled
on the grassy banks of the Yukon River, a swift, deep green artery
that flows through Dawson and once brought miners here to seek
their fortunes. Today's crowd has come for Dawson's other abundant
resource — music. The dance-inducing pop of Toronto's The Sadies
quickly changes pace to the breathy, syncopated panting and grunting
of Nunavut's Tanya Tagaq Gillis. The 30-year-old Cambridge Bay
native is what one of her colleagues calls "a rock 'n' roll throat-singer." Unlike
traditional Inuit throat-singers who perform in pairs, Gillis is
a solo act. Her primal, sensual tones and the sinuous undulation
of her live performances have piqued the interest of Icelandic
legend Björk, with whom she has toured and recorded. Gillis dazzles
the riverside crowd as well. "When Tanya finishes performing," a
bystander observes as Gillis wraps up her set with a moan and a
sigh, "the audience needs a cigarette."
For one weekend every July for the past
26 years, Dawson, a tiny Yukon outpost 280 kilometres shy of the Arctic Circle, has
thrown an extraordinary town party. The
stars are an impressive repertoire of Canadian
musicians who vie for the chance to head to
Klondike country to take part in the Dawson
City Music Festival, a uniquely Northern
event that blends small-town charm with
break-out talent. The music varies from
Celtic to rap, folk to
jazz and rockabilly.
Performers come from
across Canada, though
about half are Yukoners.
For the first time, the
2005 festival featured
musicians from all three
territories, as well as
Alaska and Iceland.
As it has been since
the gold rush, Dawson
is a summertime boom
town. Spring thaw brings a steady stream of students seeking paycheques, northern-lights
watchers and part-time miners with dreams of pay dirt. Then, for
one jam-packed weekend, the town is overwhelmed with music lovers.
The festival is the summer's biggest event, drawing thousands of
fans from all over North America and as far away as Europe and
Australia and rendering the town's 1,800 permanent residents a
temporary minority. Visitors arrive with backpacks or guitar cases
strapped to their backs, in muddy RVs, canoes on rooftops, or on
mountain bikes. They are tattooed, blue-rinsed, tie-dyed, Tilley-Hatted,
hiking-booted and flip-flopped. Hotels have been booked solid for
months and the baseball pitch outside town sprouts a tent city.
For related stories, facts and
figures, visit CG's Exploration
Online
To comment on this issue, e-mail editor@canadiangeographic.ca
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