This song is written in nsyilxcən, the language of the Syilx people, my people. It's a dying language. Fewer than 150 people speak it fluently in the world. I have just started learning it and trying to incorporate it into my music. It was important to me to do my bit to keep this fading part of my heritage alive.

01 - Sneqsilx (Family)

02 - Reasons I Can't Say

03 - River's End

04 - 5050

05 - Nknim Qaym Ncut (Sing, Dance)

06 - Lost Days

08 - Wicm (Dig)

07 - Divorce

09 - No Truth To Tell

10 - Somebody's Waiting

Coyote stories are central to the Syilx people’s oral traditions. For countless generations, the Syilx have taught their children valuable lessons through the misadventures of Coyote, or Sənk̓lip. Sənk̓lip is a mischievous, flawed figure. He’s selfish and boastful. His desires get him into troubles that are often comedic. And yet the Creator favours him. Syilx children are entertained by his foibles, but they also learn from his mistakes. As Sənk̓lip learns from his failings, so do the Syilx children who are rapt in his tales.

This idea, of learning through failure, is central to Francis Baptiste’s new album Sənk̓lip, the Trickster.

Baptiste is a songwriter who sings in both English and Nsyilxcən [nah-silk-sen], his Native language, which is currently an endangered language, with fewer than 100 fluent speakers. Through his music, Baptiste tries to keep his language alive. Every song is an opportunity for him to teach Nsyilxcən vocabulary to his son, himself, and anyone else who’s listening.

A divorced, recovering addict, Baptiste balances being a single father and being a middle-aged musician, trying to survive in BC’s most expensive city with a musician’s meagre income. Sənk̓lip, the Trickster chronicles his struggles with fatherhood, addiction, and depression, through the lens of the urbanised Indigenous experience.

“My son is born-and-raised East Van. I’m from the Osoyoos Indian Band Reservation. My struggle is how to instil in him a real sense that he is a Syilx man without growing up on the Rez. This album is my attempt to cope with that struggle and address it.”

Comedy Or Tragedy

Wita

Less Than A Week

Speplina

If We Let It

Lazy Lake

Prismatic

Brown Eyes (Kt’pimpums)

Work In Progress

Get Away

this is the first song on an album I made when I was in high school with a band called Alpha Black. I play guitar and sing on this track.

'Rest of My Life' by Alpha Black

Indigenous Singer/Songwriter. Music journalist for Vancouver Weekly, Permanent Rain Press, and Citrus Magazine.

Francis Baptiste

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