Kikkukia

Kikkukia were a four-piece rock band from Igloolik, Nunavut, who wrote and sang their own songs in Inuktitut. Joey Ammaq played rhythm guitar and sang lead, Joshua Qaunaq played lead guitar, Allan Kangok played bass and sang, and Lazarus Qatalik played drums. They began playing together in 2004 while still in high school, taking their lead from the town's own rock bands, Northern Haze and Eskiez. Igloolik had been turning out rock groups since the 1970s, and Northern Haze's 1985 debut is widely credited as the first rock album recorded in an Indigenous language in North America.

The band grew up alongside Artcirq, the Inuit circus and performance collective founded in Igloolik in 1998. Joey Ammaq was an Artcirq performer as well as Kikkukia's frontman, and first appeared with the troupe at the Alianait festival in Iqaluit in 2007. Kikkukia made their recording debut on Artcirq Jam, the collective's 2008 CD, with 'Ajurnarunniisuu'. 'Nagligivagit' followed on Artcirq's second collection, Made in Igloolik, which reached digital services in February 2012 and also carries 'Tuattiaq' by Joey Ammaq and Terry Uyarak. Both of those songs were recut for the band's own album.

In August 2013 Kikkukia recorded that album at the Black Box, Artcirq's training and performance space in the Kipsigak Arena. Chris Coleman recorded and engineered the sessions and sang on 'Ajurnaqsigaluaqpa', and Félix Boisvert mixed and mastered. The self-titled CD is a six-song set of direct, guitar-driven Inuktitut rock, with Joey Ammaq's vocals set against Joshua Qaunaq's lead guitar and the rhythm section of Allan Kangok and Lazarus Qatalik. 'Nunarjjua' takes the Earth as its subject. It was launched in Igloolik that December, with support from the Government of Nunavut, the Hamlet of Igloolik and First Air.

Early in 2014 filmmaker Derek Aqqiaruq presented Kikkukia, a 23-minute documentary about how the four started playing together and what they had been through as a band, on Igloolik's community channel and on IsumaTV. That September the band travelled with Artcirq to play a show in Arviat.

Joey Ammaq died in Igloolik in December 2014. He was 25 and left a wife and two children. Kikkukia broke up after his death. Lazarus Qatalik, known around town as Mister, kept writing and recording, and his album Iqippagit, cut in the fall of 2016 in Igloolik's old community hall with Allan Kangok among the players, is dedicated to Joey Ammaq. Its seventh track is a new recording of 'Ajurnaruniisuu', the song Kikkukia first put on tape for Artcirq Jam.

-Robert Williston