Toronto Indigenous Blues artist D.M. Lafortune continues to revisit her stellar Beauty and Hard Times album with the latest single “Where Are All The Children?” It’s a song which is wide-ranging, universal and addresses the injustices, wars and conflicts from the Middle East to Central America and beyond. But it also speaks to the tragedy involving Canadian residential schools and the horrific abuse indigenous children suffered in such institutions.
Many miles from home, we are taught in your fine schools
Where the history books are a weapon, not a tool
In many voices, we try to understand what has come upon this land
Many good-intentioned Christians tell us children you must listen or they kill us
With their kindness in God’s name, they terrorize us
“Where Are All The Children?,” written by Lafortune and found on the forthcoming 25th anniversary remastered version of Beauty and Hard Times, is a narrative in the vein of early Bob Dylan, a winding story which speaks to moments in history where people endured trials and tribulations at the hands of those in power, be it governments or a country’s military or organized religion. Bombings, shootings and terrorism is not a world for any children to live in. Above all, the song reminds us that all of us at one point or another were children. So, it’s imperative to “stop raising children to kill.”
Led by Lafortune’s powerful delivery, the song has a lovely slow-gallop feeling to it thanks to drummer Rob Greenaway and percussionist Rick Lazar. Bassist Bryant Didier and keyboardist/accordionist Denis Keldie accent the song’s core perfectly. Guitarist Neil Chapman, who has known and collaborated with Lafortune for over 50 years, provides some gorgeous electric guitar solos as Lafortune speaks about the “madmen who will never tire.”
Lafortune, who has performed the song at various events and venues including Toronto’s Free Times Cafe, saw the album lauded by Indigenous outlet Windspeaker. The publication described the album in 2013 as “an overall musical masterpiece that will demand you listen to it over and over before you truly comprehend how good it really is.” The original issuing of the record also resulted in the Maple Blues Society awarding her a Harry Hibbs Award for Perseverance in Music and Songwriting.
Reared by a white family after being taken away from her Indigenous mother, Lafortune endured a troubling childhood, which makes material such as “Where Are All The Children?” so authentic and persuasive from its vivid beginning to its sobering, haunting conclusion. A 2015 video for the song released by Lafortune captures the lyrical vivid through residential schools, the Oka crisis, the 1954 coup in Guatemala, Wounded Knee and Hiroshima among others, “illustrating the global reach of humanity’s inhumanity.”
Although 25 years old, a politically and socially relevant song such as “Where Are All The Children?” is bound to find a new audience given the current geo-political situation. It’s a passionate track concerning universal injustice.
