We promise this is no April Fools joke: JUNO-Nominated Mi’kmaq fiddler and singer Morgan Toney is coming to Rossland, bringing the fiery fiddling of Cape Breton Island with the old songs of the Mi’kmaq People together with brilliance and heart.
‘First Flight’, Toney’s 2023 East Coast Music Award-winning debut album, celebrates language and heritage in Toney’s transformation of traditional songs like the Ko’jua and the Mi’kmaq Honour Song alongside highly original songcraft.
The Mi’kmaw were likely the first people that European explorer John Cabot met in 1497 on the East Coast of what would come to be Atlantic Canada. That legacy of welcome lives on in the songs and fiddling of Cape Breton’s breakout roots artist Morgan Toney.
With thousands of years of tradition behind him, Toney melds the Scottish heritage of this Nova Scotian island with Mi’kmaq songs, stories, and language in his own genre of music, “Mi’kmaltic,” meaning Mi’kmaq + Celtic. His new album, ‘Heal the Divide’ (released on March 7th, 2025 with Indigenous labelIshkōdé Records), recognizes the difficult history the L’nuk (Mi’kmaq People) and all First Nations peoples have had in Canada. It also celebrates the L’nu legacy in Canadian culture. It’s part of Toney’s larger vision to bring people together, to set our differences aside, and walk toward a place that Tony calls the “Promised Land.”
Morgan Toney proudly welcomes the rest of Canada and the world to L’nu traditions as they contain many universal teachings.
