Aysanabee grew up in the small northern Ontario community of Kaministiquia, a short drive outside Thunder Bay.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
A couple of years ago, Aysanabee didn’t see himself as an alternative music artist, but lately, he doesn’t mind the label.
It was thrust upon him at the 2024 Juno Awards in Halifax, where the Oji-Cree musician was nominated in three categories: contemporary Indigenous artist of the year, songwriter of the year and best alternative album for his EP “Here and Now.”
He was most surprised by the latter nod.
“At first I was like, ’Oooh, they just put me in alternative. What does that mean?’” he remembers.
Junos history would’ve suggested Aysanabee was a shoo-in for the Indigenous category, and less likely to win the others. But the opposite happened. He became the first Indigenous artist to win the alternative album and songwriter categories.
Looking back, Aysanabee considers those Junos a pivotal step in his search for a musical identity. His career was fast rising at the time, and many people seemed eager to put him in boxes.
He was an Indigenous musician, a folk singer and pop-rock songwriter, but he found it most comfortable being seen as an alternative artist.
“I really like it, because ’alternative’ is just this catch-all,” he says.
“You’re not really pigeonholed. You’re like, ’I’m just going to do something weird.’”
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Right now, Aysanabee isn’t making anything especially weird, musically. But with the release of his second full-length album Edge of the Earth earlier this month, he’s been reflecting a lot on harnessing the power of his voice.
The topic comes up several times in an hour-long chat about his sudden rise to becoming “medium famous,” as he half-jokingly puts it.
The idea of being a recognizable Canadian makes the soft-spoken musician with booming vocals a little timid, as does the suggestion that other Indigenous musicians might consider his success something to aspire to.
“I felt comfortable writing songs in a Winnebago in the forest … playing in dive bars (and) being on stage,” he says.
“One thing I found really difficult – not difficult, but I took really seriously – was becoming a role model.”
He hasn’t quite figured out how to handle that responsibility yet; it’s something he’s working on.
Aysanabee was born Evan Pang, a surname he’s said was given to him by his mother to avoid anti-Indigenous racism. He grew up in the small northern Ontario community of Kaministiquia, a short drive outside Thunder Bay.
As the story goes, he began his music aspirations as a young adult living in a motorhome behind his mother’s house, with no running water and only a generator for electricity.
Music was more of a hobby at the time. Like many young men in the community, he took manual labour gigs to pay the bills. One day, while working a mining job, he fell through the ice on a frozen lake and narrowly survived.
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He’s said the scare pushed him to chase bigger dreams. Within a short time, he had packed for Toronto, enrolled in Centennial College’s three-year journalism program and was performing under the stage name Aysanabee, reclaimed from his late grandfather, a residential school survivor.
Once he graduated, he took media jobs at Huffington Post and the CTV News website, but music eventually became his main focus.
Aysanabee’s 2022 debut album Watin incorporated traits of an aspiring journalist. Its musical elements were structured around audio recordings of his late grandfather sharing memories of residential schools. Watin was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, which helped put Aysanabee on the map.
He followed it up the next year with the EP Here and Now, which captured the fallout of a romantic breakup and seemed designed to prove he wasn’t merely a concept album artist. It established him as a Canadian indie rock radio force with the hit single Somebody Else.
Edge of the Earth arrives after that success and finds Pang assessing a life that’s miles away from his past. His accomplishments now include being the first Indigenous artist to hit No. 1 on Mediabase’s Canadian alternative rock airplay chart with his song Nomads, and touring with Grammy-winning Montreal native Allison Russell.
“People change, we’re not meant to stay the same,” he sings on the new album’s opening track Embers, a song about moving past a relationship.
“A lot of the songs were written during a pivotal time in my life where I signed this record deal and suddenly was getting to pursue my dreams … in a very real way,” Pang says.
Of the six producers on Edge of the Earth, Pang says half were women. Grammy-nominated Charlie McClean is credited for Embers, while Toronto R&B singer Kyla Charter co-produced the rousing Home.
Juno winner Hill Kourkoutis lent her hand to the album’s closer Dreamcatcher, which Pang says captures his internal struggle with early success.
Making space for women is something Pang prioritized from early on. He’s signed to Ishkōdé Records, an Indigenous and women-led independent record label.
“It’s something I am very aware of, probably because my entire team is women,” he says.
“I think a big part of my success is made by working with women, not just because of the care they put into everything they do, but because they’ve been put in a position (where they) have to work harder than men to carve out spaces … in this industry.”
“I feel very protected by working with women who have dubbed themselves ’the Aunties’,” he adds.
After being asked to dive into the significance of his album, he pauses to gather his thoughts. He says it feels self-indulgent to discuss such a personal album when social and political tumult seems at a fever pitch.
“(I feel) subconscious talking about (myself) when there’s so much happening in the world,” he says.
“I’m just overcome by … everything going on in the States, everything that is going on in Gaza. Everything going on everywhere. It seems like a weird time to put out a record about myself, I guess.”
He admits he still struggles at times with imposter syndrome. His rise to fame came during a social reckoning that saw BIPOC creators elevated in popular culture, and like many fellow benefactors, he has sometimes wondered why he was chosen.
“I’ve met a lot of other Indigenous artists who have that same feeling,” he says.
“I think it’s something we’re always kind of working through.”
Pang doesn’t want other aspiring musicians to face the same internal struggles. On his current tour, he’s hand-picked local Indigenous musicians at each stop to open his show, giving them a spotlight they might not have otherwise.
At the end of the tour, he hopes to create a manga-style comic book that illustrates each performer as an Indigenous superhero of sorts, listing entertaining details about their careers and memories of the tour.
Pang says a friend suggested the idea, and once he thought it through, he realized it would put a much-needed spotlight on Indigenous up-and-comers to “keep the conversation going.”
“We rise and fall together,” he says.
“Building a community that helps itself, helps each other and strives to get the best for each other, is the best way to go about it.”
