Anishinaabe poet, singer/songwriter and MC Leonard Sumner employs a variety of lyrical tools to build his heartfelt and emotionally charged songs. Along with rhymes and turns of phrase, Sumner says the passage of time is a necessary device applied in his songwriting. Case in point – “Mourningstar” – his song that chronicles a journey through residential schools and the child welfare system. “In the demo I was angry. You could hear it. However, when I recorded it almost a decade after I wrote it, I delivered it with love rather than anger.” Raised in Little Saskatchewan First Nation, Manitoba, Sumner calls on a variety of genres to deliver his poetic stories – folk, blues, hip hop and spoken word. Whether wearing his MC hat or gently strumming an acoustic guitar, Sumner reflects his cultural history and generational injustice as well as personal accounts of grief and familial loss. His 2021 album Thunderbird was his way of coping with the death of his mother whose spirit name was Othawii Pinaythee or Brown Thunderbird. Starting with his 2013 debut Rez Poetry, and his other two albums, Thunderbird and the Juno-nominated Standing in the Light, Sumner reveals truths that have been buried for far too long. In a time when we continue to unmask unsettling history and try to heal old wounds, his music walks the line between resilience and fragility.

— Eric Rosenbaum