artist Cheryl L'Hirondelle

According to many dictionaries the swallow (aka l'hirondelle) is a “migratory swift-flying songbird.” This describes Cheryl L'Hirondelle accurately - though for this award-winning multi-disciplinary artist and singer/songwriter the definition could to end with "and so much more."

Known for an ability to freely move from loudly singing and drumming out a traditional drum song at a community event, a family jam or on a festival stage to crooning a contemporary ballad in an intimate concert setting, the presence of her poignant vocal delivery and driving hand drum percussion compliments the arrangement of whatever musical setting where she is found. Cheryl attributes this to a combination of a strong musical upbringing, several years of formal musical training and many years spent listening and participating in First Nations ceremonial music. She is from the Canadian northern plains (Kikino, Pahpahstayo AB) and comes from a large extended musical family and has been singing and performing since she was a child.

L’Hirondelle’s previous musical efforts have also garnered her critical acclaim with two Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards 2006 and 2007 for her contributions to Vancouver based Aboriginal Women’s Ensemble M’Girl. Her own first attempt in producing (and as one half of) the singing/songwriting duo Nikamok was recognized with a nomination from the Prairie Music Awards (now the Western Canadian Music Awards) and many of her songs have been licensed for television, documentary and feature films. In 2011, Cheryl was also nominated for a KM Hunter Award in Music.

Ever the visionary, she continues to come up with new ways her music and other artistic ideas can converge and in 2009 was recognized as an Honoree in the Net.Art category from the Webby Awards for nikamon ohci askiy [www.vancouversonglines.ca] an ongoing locative sonic mapping & songwriting project what she hopes to be her first of many online music projects. She is also the recipient of two imagineNATIVE Film + Media Festival New Media Awards (2005 & 2006) and was invited to curate the festival’s inaugural new media exhibitions (Codetalkers - 2009; RE:counting coup - 2010 & S-O-S3 - 2011). Her performance art practice has also been written about, most notably in Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women (2001).

Her latest music video is called Our Mama Said (NDNSPAM Song), which she co-directed with Gregory Hoskins (who also produced the track). Cheryl is also working on two major sound recording projects: a series of EPs featuring compositions from her ongoing nomadic Songlines project and Prison Songs (why the caged bird sings) an album's worth of songs she is co-writing with women in prisons across this land now known as Canada, the latter to be co-produced by Gregory Hoskins and David Travers-Smith.