Jazzmin Whitford is a musician from Kamloops. She sings blues-style music while highlighting social issues Indigenous people face.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Jazzmin Whitford

KAMLOOPS - At 19 she's has already shared the stage with Arcade Fire and is planning to release her first album this summer.

Jazzmin Whitford who goes by Jaz Scuff is an Indigenous musician from Kamloops, and aside from performing at the Juno Awards earlier this year, Whitford says singing on the streets is where she makes most of her music connections — and income.

The local artist, who has been living out of her van for about three years, likes to write and sing blues-style music while playing a washboard or a traditional native drum. Whitford says when she discovered she could sing in public, not only would it help her music career but it would also become her full-time job.

“After high school, I was super broke and I knew I could sing since I was really young but I never really tried to make money off doing it,” she says. “I just started singing on the street in front of a pharmacy on Victoria Street.”

Whitford would play her washboard and sing almost every day for about two years in front of the Kipp-Mallery Pharmacy in downtown Kamloops. After a while, she decided to leave her hometown to move to Vancouver to do the same thing, but for a larger audience, and to network with other Indigenous artists.

“Playing on the street you meet lots of musicians with different connections,” she says. “I started going to like any audition for like movies, TV shows, and plays and anything even though I didn’t want to be in a movie or anything like that, I just wanted to learn how to play music and sing in front of talent agents.”

Whitford says going to auditions has helped her get bookings for all sorts of gigs around the city, especially for events related to First Nations' culture.

“All the good connections I’ve made (in Vancouver) come from being part of this Indigenous youth community they have here,” she says. “I’m First Nations from Shuswap Lake and so I use my traditional hand drum and I just sing blues over that and that's mainly what I get gigs for.”

A lot of her song writing inspiration comes from the social and economic issues Indigenous people face, she says.

"We are still being oppressed left and right by oil companies, non-government organizations and the police," she says, adding that her song Pipeline Blues highlights some of the issues Indigenous groups are facing with the current national pipeline debate.

"All of my music that I write myself and the poems I write are based around my Indigenous sovereignty," she says. "Making sure that people understand the injustices we face as Indigenous people every day, and just how being alive as an Indigenous person in this day in age, it's quite something."

Whitford says her music and her connections with other Indigenous artists have helped her emotionally and mentally.

"These supportive Indigenous communities are like totally integral to my mental and physical health," she says. "Like so many of us call it quits before high school is over and we off ourselves or start doing hard drugs, and it's pretty much over by then."

Whitford says the support she has received through friends and other artists for her music has helped her overcome several struggles she has faced as a young musician. She says her next goal is to learn her traditional language.

"I want to (start) making more work from the worldview of my people through my language," she says.

The artist says she doesn't plan on stopping any time soon. Whitford has performed in festivals across Vancouver and is planning to make a trip back to her hometown for the Kamloops International Buskers Festival at the end of July. 

She also plans to release a five-song album that will also include some spoken-word poetry by the end of August.

Watch the video to see Jazzmin Whitford in action. She is fourth from the left of backup singers for Arcade Fire at the 2018 Juno Awards.

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