Jul. 21, 2022
Everybody felt Morley Loon’s playful presence that July day in the field in Cache Creek, B.C.
The legendary Quebec Cree singer and songwriter’s guitar was up on stage, draped with his beaded guitar strap of smoked moosehide.
For years before his untimely death from cancer in his mid-30s in 1986, Loon had loved that guitar, played it, composed on it and drummed on it in his unique way. He used it to pen songs like N’Doheeno (Hunter), Nooj Meech (Out on the land), and others.
It was music that would change the landscape for Indigenous artists of today.
Friends, musicians and family in B.C., where Loon had spent the last years of his life, called the instrument simply “Morley” after Loon’s death. They took care of it, composed songs with it, and leaned on it when life got hard. At some point the strap and guitar were separated.
Now, 36 years after the singer’s death, “Morley” the guitar was about to be returned to his Quebec Cree family.
“I really do feel his spirit in that guitar,” said Cheyenne Loon, Morley’s daughter, who travelled to St’uxwtews/Cache Creek to attend the 2 Rivers Remix Society‘s Movable Feast, an all-Indigenous music festival held July 8-10, along with her daughter, Lhasa, her aunt and Morley’s sister, Annie Loon, and her uncle, Cree singer and songwriter, Lloyd Cheechoo.
A tribute to Morley Loon was held on the last day of the festival. There were songs, stories, tears and lots of healing.
“I never got the chance to say goodbye to him. When he passed, I was 14,” said Cheyenne, who last saw her dad in the early 1980s at the age of eight when he left Mistissini to head west and she moved to Miami.
“I had to grieve alone. In Miami,” said Cheyenne from her home in Toronto.
“When you say goodbye to somebody … it’s important to grieve with others, you know, to cry together, to share stories. I never got to do that. I got to do that [in Cache Creek], finally … It was wonderful to be at that festival.”
A trailblazer in the music scene of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, Morley Loon was one of the first people in Canada to sing and popularise songs in an Indigenous language. There is no question the Cree artist from Mistissini, Que., has left an indelible mark on Indigenous music and activism and has inspired many other Indigenous artists to sing in their own language.
He also deeply inspired many in his homeland of Eeyou Istchee, Que., and in his second home in the B.C. interior, where he lived in the years before he died.
“Morley is one of the most important folk singers of his time,” said Kevin Howes, a two-time Grammy-nominated producer and album-note writer, and the driving force behind Voluntary In Nature, a creative exchange “far away from the greed of the music industry,” according to its Instagram page.
For 16 years, he was also a creative force for U.S.-based Light in the Attic Records. In 2014, he released Native North America (Vol. 1): Aboriginal Folk, Rock and Country 1966 - 1985, featuring Morley Loon and other ground-breaking Indigenous artists such as Willie Thrasher, Willie Mitchell, Lloyd Cheechoo, Willie Dunn and others, many of whom performed in Cache Creek in July.
Light in the Attic also re-released an all-Cree album of Morley Loon’s songs called Northland, My Land, originally released in 1981 by CBC and Boot records. The re-released album includes liner notes and a full translation of lyrics into Cree syllabics, as well as English and French.
“He explicitly sang in the Cree language … going back through his musical life and his vision of sharing songs in Cree about his people and his homeland. This is very significant work,” said Howes, who also travelled to Cache Creek for the tribute to Loon and other Indigenous artists who appear on Native North America Vol. 1.
“That [this music] is still being kept alive … it’s phenomenal,” said Howes.
While Morley Loon’s legend was alive and well in a small community in B.C., his move west had caused a break in the chain.
For years in Mistissini, there had been rumours of the fate of Morley’s guitar, but no one knew for sure who had it, or who would know where it was.
“I only had one name. And that was the name of my father’s wife, Valerie Morgan,” said Cheyenne, adding she thought she’d reached a dead end when she came across Valerie’s 2007 obituary.
But then came a message from Howes, that a tribute to her dad was being planned in Cache Creek. Howes sent contact information for festival organiser Meeka Morgan, Valerie’s niece.
“So I phoned Meeka, and when I told her who I was, she burst into tears. And then I did, too. And we had a good cry together on the phone,” Cheyenne recalled.
Meeka also delivered the news Cheyenne wanted to hear.
“She told me that she had his guitar and that she wanted to return it back to his family and to his community,” said Cheyenne.
For Meeka, Morley’s music was part of an Indigenous reawakening that continues today.
“It was more than just some tunes on a guitar. It was part of a movement that was changing and trailblazing and was going to create a continuation of our culture as Indigenous people,” said Meeka.
On top of his impact as a musician, Morley was a very important presence in the lives of Meeka and so many others in B.C.
“He was very gentle and loving,” said Meeka.
“Because of the intergenerational effects of residential school, we didn’t see a lot of gentle masculine love of safety and value … All the kids really gravitated to Morley.”
When Valerie died in 2007, “Morley” the guitar was given to Meeka, but the moosehide leather strap — such a powerful reminder of Loon and his attachment to his culture and his homeland of Eeyou Istchee — was missing.
Tracking it down took many years of work, finally coming together last year.
“I could feel the happiness of the guitar and strap and I knew that it had to go home,” said Meeka, adding it’s the beginning of another cycle that would allow his birth family to heal.
After the festival in Cache Creek this month, Cheyenne took her father’s guitar with her home to Toronto. She hopes to learn to play it.
She says she knows that the guitar’s journey is not over and that someday it will return to Mistissini.
There are also dreams of bringing together all the surviving artists who appear on Native North America, Vol. 1. No doubt “Morley” the guitar will join them.