Feast of fusion RMTC's Rubaboo: A Métis Cabaret is a musical mélange of jazz, folk, roots By: Conrad Sweatman Posted: 6:01 PM CDT Wednesday, Apr. 29, 2026

You’ve probably had sirop d’érable and pemmican, but have you tried rubaboo?

A scoop of peas or corn, a dash of flour and onions, bison meat if you have it, a maple syrup garnish — and suddenly you’re cooking with bear grease (which you shouldn’t forget to add, either).

In a pinch, you might substitute grouse for bison meat, and throw in some extra turnip and parsnip plus wild vegetables to thicken your rubaboo stew.

Cooking and fusion metaphors are never far from how we talk about cultural blending, but in Canada, we’ve tended to resist America’s more assimilationist image of the melting pot. Instead, we talk of mosaics, or sometimes salad bowls, to emphasize eclecticism.

The inspiration Andrea Menard takes from the Plains Métis’ traditional dish in her new musical work, Rubaboo: A Métis Cabaret — currently on a mini-Prairies tour that closes out the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre mainstage season — feels especially fitting.

“It’s a musical feast for the senses.”

“It’s a musical feast for the senses. We are creating this metaphorical soup through the four sacred elements of earth, wind, water and fire,” says the Vancouver-based Métis actress, singer-songwriter and speaker, who grew up in Saskatchewan.

There’s a decent chance you’ve seen Menard on popular TV shows such as WB’s Supernatural or APTN’s Tribal, and she voiced the characters of Sarah Merasty and Kohkum on APTN’s charming stop-motion animated series Wapos Bay.

While collecting an impressive list of TV and film credits, Menard has led a parallel career as a jazz chanteuse, releasing five albums to date. But folk and regional influences, fiddles and Louis Riel references also weave throughout this work.

Rubaboo — while bearing the jazzy subtitle of “cabaret” — leans more in the second direction, featuring three musicians onstage with Menard, including longtime collaborator Robert Walsh, who co-wrote much of the music.

“It’s all across the board, every one of them has a little moment to shine,” she says, mentioning that one of the musicians plays the Chapman stick, a vertical guitar-like stick invented in the 1970s that is arguably one of the quirkiest instruments around.

“There’s some prayer songs, but then there’s some fun rootsy music.”

“You’re (also) going to see a little bit of traditional songs sung in the language. There’s some prayer songs, but then there’s some fun rootsy music that is more contemporary.”

Menard — who was born in Flin Flon — has already performed the work across much of Canada, but is clearly looking forward to presenting it in her original home, from which she draws inspiration.

That sense of return is clearly tied to Manitoba’s cultural landscape.

Manitoba’s Métis musical traditions reflect the blended origins of the Métis people themselves. The Red River fiddle tradition — with its Scottish and Irish jigs and reels and Indigenous emphasis on oral traditions and shared social practices — once flourished along Red River settlements, trade posts and beyond.

Today, the living tradition thrives in competition jigging and community gatherings, features stars such as fiddler Patti Kusturok and is passed on to future generations by music teachers working with the Frontier School Division in Manitoba’s North.

Menard’s excited, and maybe a tad anxious, to see how her local community responds to Rubaboo, which features a lilting fiddle alongside the Chapman stick and other instruments.

“It’s surprisingly beautiful and vulnerable at the same time, because my family has not seen my show yet. Can you believe it? We’re not the biggest travellers. And, you know, they don’t get on planes and pop over and see my work these days,” she says.

In Canada, talk of cultural fusion is sometimes met with cynicism because it can seem like sloganeering that obscures real inequalities.

“It’s surprisingly beautiful and vulnerable at the same time.”

Sayings like “no reconciliation without truth” push back against this, insisting that reconciliation begins with acknowledging certain hard realities.

Menard’s work strives to gracefully engage this tension.

“We have discovered this wonderful thing that the show lands exactly where you are,” she says. “If you have never heard of residential schools, or if you’ve (haven’t) any clue about the relationship with Canada Indigenous peoples, then you might feel like, ‘Oh, that was a bit harsh.’”

The performer suggests her work is a rebuttal to all of those who believe that this sort of art is necessarily depressing and devoid of joy.

“But if you’re on your own journey of self-evolution, if you love music — you will literally feel the love emanating from us,” she says.

winnipegfreepress.com/conradsweatman