Guest
The walk up the hill is steep, punctuated by beeded sheep gaze. Trucks park at the bottom for the improvised week-end plant market. Out of the sprouting herd of visitors, a young fire-maned hiker stands out, a fiddle case in hand. It is early morning and he is ready to play. Ko’jua is a social song, with a dance associated to it, a two step. Morgan Toney first heard this song played on an old recording of fiddling Lee Cremo (1938-1999, Nova Scotia). Morgan’s repertoire holds pride in his fiddle adaptation of Mi’kmaw songs that are usually sung with a drum: “It has been something I have been known for in the past year.” Indeed, Morgan started to learn the fiddle just over a year ago. Born in We’koqma’q, he moved to Wagmatcook in 2015, where his friend graced him with the gift of a fiddle. He soon enrolled in a masters music program at Cape Breton University. When asked by the chair woman of the department if he had a music instrument at home, Morgan mentioned his fiddle, without specifying that he didn’t play it himself. As a result, he was enrolled in an intermediate fiddle class with Stan Chapman, one of the greatest instructors who taught Ashley MacIsaac and Nathalie MacMaster. “He had a lot of patience for me, he took the time to teach me, and it has been uphill ever since”. Morgan usually plays in Mi’kmaw communities in Unama’ki (Cape Breton). His Mi’kmaw renditions of Cape Breton traditional fiddle tunes “made a lot of elder’s proud, for they had rarely, or never seen Mi’kmaw songs played that way”. His playing brings over a younger crowd as well as a non-indigenous audience. Morgan also composes music, which he always dedicates to someone or something, he specifies, never to himself. “Ko’jua”, Lee Cremo Adaptation by Morgan Toney June 6, 2020 Unama’ki, Nova Scotia
