Digawolf Announces 'Ini' Out Oct 28 | | First Tlicho Language Album in over 10 years

Yellowknife’s Digawolf returns with a cinematic fourth album, Ini (Spirit), the first entirely Tlicho language album in over a decade. Taking listeners on a journey through the North, Ini is set for release on October 28th The news comes paired with the title track – a song about love for family.

Watch/Share: Digawolf “Ini”

Speaking on the single Diga explains “Sometimes it feels like the world has gone a little crazy, and is drowning out language and culture, and we need to go into the atmosphere to get some perspective on how much we love those things: family, culture, and the love of who we are. It’s about straddling two worlds. Sometimes you have to use technology to preserve your language and culture. The ancient collides with the future.”

In writing and recording Ini, Diga aimed to bring the language to a new level through sound. Diga built instrumentals up around the stories he was telling — partly sung and partly spoken in his distinctive gravelly voice —of celebration, beauty, gratitude, and prayer; Diga reflects on both the struggle and the rich history in the North.

English translations do not do Tlicho lyrics justice as Tlicho uses shared history, metaphor, and imagination to add nuance to every word; a brief Tlicho phrase can evoke an entire story to those who speak the language. Such a truth resonates with importance on why continuing to use Indigenous languages speaks to more than just a use of words; it is the preservation of a rich oral history held within a community.

Diga grew up in the remote community of Behchoko, the capital of the Tlicho nation, located in Canada’s Northwest Territories an hour outside of Yellowknife. His first and only language until the age of nine was Tlicho, and his songs are often inspired by his father’s stories of life on the land, as well as his own experience of navigating two worlds.