Courtesy: NUNANTSIAQ ONLINE
There was only one drum kit in Igloolik in the 1980s, and it was kept at the church hall.
“When we couldn’t get in we just played anywhere,” said guitarist James Ungalaq. “We played drums on the table, stuff like that.”It was a challenge to start a band in the North, he said, sitting at a table in the Caribrew Café at Iqaluit’s Frobisher Inn—tired from a night of jamming at the Storehouse Bar and Grill the evening before.
His colleagues, members of Nunavut’s iconic 1980s rock band Northern Haze, all nodded. “We were isolated in Igloolik and equipment was hard to come by,” Ungalaq said.The band started out with two homemade acoustic guitars, built during shop class at the high school. Guitar strings and patch cables had to be ordered from the South. “We were disconnected from the mainstream.”
