Originally published in the Bird’s Eye
There’s a genre of music you’ve probably never heard before, and it’s coming to Quadra on July 16.
Morgan Toney calls it Mi’kmaltic — a word he coined himself, built from Mi’kmaq and Celtic, that describes exactly what he does and who he is. Toney is Mi’kmaq, a proud member of the Wagmatcook First Nation on Cape Breton Island, and he grew up surrounded by two musical traditions that have shared the same East Coast shoreline for centuries: the fiery, relentless fiddle music that defines his island home, and the ancient songs, stories, and language of his own people, the L’nuk. For most of history, those two traditions have run alongside each
other, each intact and separate. What Toney has spent his career doing is something genuinely different — bringing them into direct conversation, not as a novelty act or a fusion experiment, but as a natural expression of a life that has always belonged to both. The genre he’s made is called Mi’kmaltic because that’s what it is: Mi’kmaq and Celtic, woven together at the root. It sounds exactly as rich and alive as that combination suggests.
The result is genuinely hard to place in any existing category, and that’s entirely the point. Toney is a fiddler, a singer, and a songwriter who moves with complete ease between Cape Breton jigs and traditional Mi’kmaq songs — not as a performer presenting one culture to the other, but as someone for whom both are equally native, equally alive, and equally worth honouring. His 2025 album Heal the Divide, released on Ishkōdé Records, an Indigenous label, sits honestly with the painful and often unresolved history the Mi’kmaq People have lived through in Canada, while insisting just as firmly on celebrating what L’nu culture
has brought to this land and continues to bring. The album earned him the JUNO Award for Traditional Roots Album of the Year at this spring’s ceremony in Hamilton, Ontario — and the East Coast Music Award for Indigenous Artist of the Year. Both in the same year. For a 27-yearold artist, it represents a remarkable moment of national recognition, and by most accounts it is only the beginning.
There’s a passage in Toney’s bio that has stayed with me since I first read it. The Mi’kmaw, it notes, were likely the first Indigenous people that European explorer John Cabot encountered when he arrived on the East Coast in 1497. That legacy — of being the ones already present, of extending welcome across an enormous cultural distance, of bridge-building as a way of life long before it ever became a metaphor — runs through Toney’s music in a way that feels less like a chosen artistic theme and more like something he was born standing on. His stated vision is to bring people together, to set differences aside, and to walk collectively toward what he calls the Promised Land. That’s not a small ambition for a fiddle record, and yet it feels earned. You don’t need to share his heritage or his history to feel what he’s reaching for, which is, in itself, the whole point.
He performs as the Morgan Toney Trio alongside Keith Mullins on guitar, vocals, and percussion, and Ryan Roberts on mandolin and vocals. Together they’ve built a live show consistently described as both exhilarating and deeply moving — one that weaves tradition and contemporary sound together in a way that reaches audiences across ages and backgrounds. People who arrive knowing nothing about Mi’kmaq culture tend to leave changed. Which is, in its own way, the clearest possible proof of concept for everything Toney is working toward. This music was built to reach across a divide — it’s right there in the album title — and it does exactly that.
As a self-identified “music island,” we’ve been lucky enough to host some genuinely extraordinary artists over the years, and the shows we carry with us longest tend to be the ones that brought something we’d never quite experienced before. This feels like one of those nights. “One of the best parts of running the Inn is introducing our community to amazing musicians,” says General Manager Christi Edwards. “Morgan Toney Trio brings something fresh while honouring deep musical traditions, and we’re really looking forward to sharing that experience with everyone who joins us. We can’t wait to welcome everyone for what we know will be an unforgettable evening by the water.”
The Morgan Toney Trio performs in the Heriot Bay Inn’s Herons Dining Room on Thursday, July 16. Dinner reservations open at 5 pm with show-only seating beginning at 7 pm, and the performance running from
7:30 to 9:30 pm. Tickets are $49 per person for the show only. Call the Heriot Bay Inn at 250-285-3322 to reserve your seat.
Top image credit: The Morgan Toney Trio – submitted photo