I noticed today that William Prince is getting ready to go back on tour, starting with several dates in Canada and culminating in a lengthy stint in Western Europe. Unfortunately, he’s only going to play two shows in the USA (New Orleans and northern California), so I’m going to miss him this time around. Still, this seemed like as good a time as any to mention his fascinating background and artistic import. Prince was raised about 200 kilometers north of Winnipeg as a member of Peguis First Nation—an indigenous community made up of people of Plains Ojibwe and Cree descent. This particular First Nation is named after Chief Peguis, who, in the late eighteenth century, emigrated west with a band of Ojibwe from present-day Ontario. As a songwriter, Prince embraces First Nations culture in his work, but his interests are wide-ranging. For example, his most recent solo album is Gospel First Nation (2020), which mines his Christian upbringing for hope and mercy amid a global pandemic. As he explains in a recent interview:
This is supposed to be a joyous representation of songs I loved, and grew up with, and learned music from. This record leans much more toward the Jesus who would have been out there right now, helping the people who are suffering to pay rent, and dealing through this crisis, and people that are sick, and ‘bring me your weak,’ and ‘bring me those that need my attention.’
Still, the album is never saccharine or banal. Like Johnny Cash before him, Prince culls through his evangelical hymnbook and finds songs of stinging honesty and hard-earned comfort. As he sings in the classic hymn “Does Jesus Care?,” composed by Frank Graeff in 1901:
Does Jesus care when my way is dark
With a nameless dread and fear
As the daylight fades into deep night shades
Does He care enough to be near?Oh, yes
He cares
I know He cares
His heart is touched with my grief
When the days are weary, the long nights dreary
I know my Saviour cares
The reference to Johnny Cash above is not accidental. To be sure, Prince’s rich baritone also recalls the Man in Black, even as his lyrical earnestness groups him among contemporary artists such as Jason Isbell. This is Americana (in the broadest sense of the word) at its very best.
From an 1848 journal entry by Søren Kierkegaard: “Perhaps some Sunday it might be vivifying and also a way of jolting the observational approach to choose a morning hymn which speaks only of the day at hand and then to take off from there; instead of commenting on all the lofty truths, to pray for the day at hand, instead of observations which range all over time and world history, to pray for the day at hand—and since family devotions presumably have fallen into disuse, to use Sunday in this way.”
Wow, Chris, thank you for introducing me to this Indigenous artist. I've listened to a lot of CBC radio in my time, so I feel like I must have heard William Prince before, but I didn't know his story or background. I'm from the next province over, in Saskatchewan, treaty 6 land where I grew up.