Saskatoon Symphony’s Holiday Pops Includes Christmas Songs In Cree

This Saturday is your opportunity to celebrate the holiday season with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra’s annual Holiday Pops! performance. It’s also a chance to hear some traditional Christmas Carols sung in Cree. E.D. Feehan teacher Falynn Baptiste will be performing a couple of songs from her CD called ‘A Cree Christmas’, which will be performed in both Cree and English.

Baptiste was raised on the Red Pheasant First Nation, but as she got older, she says she lost touch with her Cree and Metis roots. She went to high school in a neighbouring town and had some negative experiences. In a sense, she says, assimilation worked because many people her age don’t really speak their mother tongue any more.

When Baptiste was abut 30, she began to realize how important the Cree language and her culture was to her identity, so she immersed herself in Indigenous languages study at USask and is now a Cree language teacher. You have the option of experiencing the SSO’s Holiday Pops! in person at TCU Place or online.

For tickets: www.saskatoonsymphony.org