“Shed a few tears watching kids play instruments and sing?
Nothing will open the heart like a can of tuna than watching kids perform music.”
— CBC Music Executive Producer and Music Class Challenge founder Kai Black
As a non-status, light-skinned, motherless-tongued Cree boy on Treaty 8 Territory in the early aughts, I discovered music while stowed away on the passenger side floor of my dad’s beat up Camaro while he drove to High Prairie with the top down. I passed him April Wine, Honeymoon Suite and Tom Petty tapes from his vinyl briefcase, doing my best to listen through the wind.
As I aged, I learned about music while sandwiched in the space between the back of his couch and the drywall. Alanis, The Weakerthans, Sloan — stacks of bargain bin Canadiana CDs from Radio Shack on one of those JVC multi-disc setups. All good stuff; nothing in my kokum’s language for me to major in.
Formal youth music education up north (arguably central) in 2001 was Fred Penner and the anthem in French. Yet, of all my squirreled away music education memories, my pre-junior high, grade six instrument try-out lives rent free. To guide children into the junior high band program, our music teacher brought instruments to our last elementary assembly before summer break. They encouraged us to bang drums, pluck strings, press keys and play with spitvalves. I fell in love with the baritone sax (and Lisa Simpson).
I also had no idea how much it cost for a child to play the baritone sax. Like a lot of under-educated, under-served People with Indigenous blood, my dad wasn’t well off. He couldn’t afford it, so I spent my junior high years typing for Mavis Beacon instead.
An opportunity like the CBC Music Class Challenge could have changed my life.
A National Music Competition for Underfunded Classrooms
The CBC Music Class Challenge is a national competition presented by CBC Music and MusiCounts, a JUNO Awards affiliated charity. Every year, music classes are invited to perform a Canadian song and submit it as a YouTube video for a chance to win $2,000 worth of new musical instruments. Underfunded kids getting their shot at the baritone sax — It’s pure joy.
I spoke with the creative director of the challenge, CBC Music Executive Producer Kai Black, about the development of the project and the importance of First Nations, Métis and Inuit music in guiding its current iteration. Kai was joined by the renowned Cree-Dene artist, educator and composer Sherryl Sewepagaham, who was recently nominated for Classical Album of the Year at the 2026 JUNOs for her work with the Canadian Chamber Choir.
In 2019, UNESCO declared it was the International Year of Indigenous Languages, bringing attention to declining fluency in mother tongues across the planet. Seeing an opportunity to learn about Indigenous languages here at home, Kai discovered the majority of our languages are endangered (some critically, with less than 100 fluent speakers left). To help in the best way he knew how, Kai introduced Indigenous music into the CBC Music Class Challenge.
“I invited Indigenous artists in and we recorded videos with instructions on how to pronounce their language properly,” says Kai. “I knew teachers wouldn’t want to participate unless they were coached and felt like they had permission. I couldn’t believe my eyes — we went from Shawn Mendes being the most popular song on the list each year to the Twin Flames song Human as the most performed thing in the country. Holy mackerel, let’s try that again.”
The following year, Kai submitted Ode’min Giizis (Strawberry Moon) by Tara Williamson and lo and behold, it became the most chosen song by classes across the country. Following seven straight years of supporting Indigenous joy, Kai had something new up his sleeve for 2025. At MusiCounts suggestion, Kai commissioned Sherryl to write an original composition.
A long-time teacher, Sherryl set out to compose a piece reflecting what she had been hearing in classrooms: young people are dealing with a lot of discomfort, fear and political confusion on social media, creating awful mental health challenges. As a Cree language learner rather than a fluent speaker, the words of the piece were very important to Sherryl. Returning back to the heart, she penned mitêh, an open-access choral composition written in Cree.
“mitêh is about returning back to the heart, and connecting with one another. The words loosely translate as ‘I feel my heart here, listen can you hear it? My heart beats like your heart, your heart beats like my heart.’ The second verse is ‘I feel your heart there, listen, listen, can you hear it? I feel my heart here.’ It goes back and forth, like our hearts beating as one. Then the spoken text is ‘when we stand together, it’s just like one heart beat.’”
Returning Back to the Heart
For Kai, returning to the heart brought him back to the W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind in Brantford, Ontario on Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. The school runs an acclaimed, celebrated music program — teaching blind and low vision students by rote, hand over hand, large print, braille and digital media. Taking cameras inside the school, Kai filmed a mini documentary titled Beyond Sight, which featured the school choir performing their rendition of mitêh.
“I took cameras into W. Ross Macdonald to make a documentary about its music program, specifically because students were preparing mitêh as their song entry for the music class challenge,” says Kai. “A lot of the parents were sitting in the audience — including a Cree mom from Saskatchewan, who is living on Six Nations with her Oneida husband and their blind daughter who attends the school. Their daughter is one of five Indigenous students in the W. Ross Macdonald choir. At the end of their first run, the mother stood up and spoke with such force, breaking into tears about the pride she felt about her daughter sharing her language with the other students. She had never witnessed her culture being embraced like that. She was so moved. We were all moved. That’s the power of these opportunities — they go beyond what we can imagine as they find their life in the world. Seeing yourself in your music? That’s everything.”
Written in Standard Roman Orthography, a phonetic writing system used to help read, learn and understand Indigenous languages, mitêh is an education piece as well. The composition is also provided in the International Phonetic Alphabet, commonly used in every day dictionaries like the Cambridge and Oxford English Dictionary.
The score, available for free on the MusiCounts website, also comes with two workshops for both teachers and directors, to get a better understanding of the language. Educators are then free to decide if they’re going to perform a full SATB (soprano, alto, tenor and bass) arrangement; a soprano/alto combo; an Orff arrangement, which structures music into simple, short segments designed for elementary music learners; or even acapella. Mitêh is for everyone — however creatively classrooms want to approach it.
“Students have so much openness and acceptance for diverse languages and backgrounds. When I started teaching in 2000, I was in my community in Northern Alberta teaching music to fluent Cree children. It was a western music curriculum and I felt it was quite rigid. I asked myself, ‘how do I bring Indigenous music into the classroom?’ I can’t look these kids in the face and teach them only about old dead white composers,” Sherryl laughs.
“Music teachers are my heroes. The time it takes to sit down and create scores for an orchestra — that’s gotta be the greatest act of love,” Kai says. “What I love about music is that it gives voice to our emotions. The fact that someone would sit down and amplify that emotion by creating spectacular arrangements night after night … It’s really very special. Every teacher that does that should get a special reward — hopefully they’re appreciated in their communities.”
I Feel my Heart Here
Sherryl leaves us with a thought: music gives First Nations, Métis and Inuit children an avenue to show who they are — not only as individuals and emerging artists, but who they are to their communities as expressive, wonderful storytellers. To internalize Sherryl’s voice; to advocate for it — is to acknowledge that Indigenous youth are fiercely innovative music creators. From their bedroom studios on-reserve to classrooms across the country to stages in every community — Indigenous musicians are re-defining the Turtle Island music scene.
I think about my youth, and it gives me hope that one day my kid will be sandwiched in the space between the back of my couch and the drywall — except this time, they’ll find my mother tongue there instead.
Classrooms performing mitêh in this spring’s Music Class Challenge:
- mitêh (Heart) Performance Highlights – 2026 Canadian Music Class Challenge
- Watch W. Ross Macdonald School for the Blind students perform Sherryl Sewepagaham’s miteh
CBC Music Resources:
Cole Buhler (he/him) is a mixed Cree (and several suspicious European countries) writer. Raised on the grassland of Treaty No. 8 Territory, in the Peace Region, he was gifted with a deep appreciation for reading, writing and storytelling from his father. A journalist by trade, Cole has worked alongside First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities telling stories and truths for years.