Joseph Desjarlais didn’t exactly have a grand plan to become a fiddle player.
He was just 10 years old, sitting in math class in his home of Île-à-la-Crosse, bored.
He’d already finished the day’s lesson when his teacher asked if anyone wanted to go try fiddle. That sounded pretty good to Joseph.
“Anything to not just sit here,” he remembers thinking.
Then he picked up the fiddle.
“Basically, as soon as I picked it up, I loved it. It was so fun.”
Shortly after that, before he’d really learned to make much of a sound from the instrument, Joseph recalls walking into a room and hearing the legendary Métis fiddler John Arcand play; Joseph later went on to learn from John.
“If that’s where I can get to, then I think I’m OK with sounding bad at first,” he remembers.
Fortunately, the sounding-bad part didn’t last too long.
Now, years later, that kid from Île-à-la-Crosse has represented Saskatchewan twice at the Canadian Grand Masters Fiddling Competition, surrounded by some of the best fiddle players in the country.
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For Joseph, it’s about as good as it gets.
“It’s one of my favourite events basically of all time,” he says. it's just a bunch of people that play fiddle all hanging out together, all playing music together, and just walking around the event centre, you're hearing people playing fiddle constantly”
The only downside, he admits, is the event is extremely nerve-wracking.
This year, messages of support started rolling in on social media before Desjarlais took the stage in Grande Prairie, Alberta. Friends, family and community members told him they were watching and rooting for him.
Hundreds of them.
“I’m like, OK, now the pressure is on.”
There can be a certain mould to competitive fiddling, he explains — select tunes, particular styles and an idea of what judges might be looking for.
Shaking off the nerves and seeking advice from his fiddle community, Joseph knew he had a decision to make. Conform to play the way everyone thought the fiddle should sound like, or,
“I was like, OK, I’m just gonna play what I wanna play.”
After his performance, he walked off stage feeling good about his decision.
“I just played my fiddle how I like to play it.”
And for Joseph, that means bringing his distinct Métis culture and sound with him.
There are tunes that immediately take him home. Rubber Dolly reminds him of an Elder from his community who loved the tune. Others — Pretty Little Cindy, Spanish Two Step, and, of course, the Red River Jig — are tied to memories of Île-à-la-Crosse, local musicians and hearing fiddle music on MBC radio.
Those connections are part of why Joseph's ambitions for fiddle have grown well beyond his own playing.
He teaches private students now, something his younger self never imagined doing. After moving to Saskatoon for university in 2019 and then having his plans interrupted by the pandemic, he eventually found his way to fiddle camp in 2022. There, other musicians encouraged him to think differently about his role and encouraged him to teach.
Being able to play was one thing; learning how to teach someone else was another.
Joseph began shadowing fiddle instructor Donna Turk and learning from other musicians who encouraged him to pass along what he knew.
Now, when he talks about the future, his biggest hopes aren't necessarily about himself.
Well, except for one.
“I want to win the Grand Masters.”
That dream has actually been around longer than he first remembered. In Grade 10, Joseph and his friend Jeremy would sit in the school computer lab searching for fiddle videos. One featured Daniel Gervais performing at the Grand Masters.
Joseph remembers hearing the calibre of playing and thinking, essentially: Is this how far you can take this?
One dream became getting there.
He's done that.
The second is winning.
He's still working on that one.
But ask Joseph what else he wants to accomplish and the conversation quickly moves away from personal accolades and competitions.
He wants more Métis fiddle players.
He wants more young people learning.
And he really, really wants people to start dancing again.
Joseph talks about a time when fiddle music wasn't simply something people sat quietly and listened to. It belonged to dances, gatherings and community. There were callers. People knew how to square dance, waltz and foxtrot.
He'd like to see some of that come back.
“Anybody can dance,” he says. “Playing fiddle takes a lot of determination and hard work, but anybody can dance.”
He's even learning how to call dances himself.
There's just one logistical problem. He can't call and play fiddle at the same time.
Which brings him right back to needing more fiddlers.
For Joseph, playing for dancers remains one of his favourite things to do. He loves performing at Métis events and accompanying jigging and square-dancing teams because the relationship between musician and dancer changes the entire experience.
At a show, people often just sit and listen politely.
He's grateful for that. But folks on a dance floor?
That's different.
“They're putting their heart and soul out on that dance floor,” he says. “I'm able to help them do that.”
That energy keeps him playing.
And it might also explain what Joseph hopes young Métis people see when they watch him take the stage at a competition like the Grand Masters, or at festivals and events close to home.
Big goals can look impossible from the beginning. They become less impossible when you work at them a little at a time.
Joseph first learned about competing at the Grand Masters years before he would actually make it there. Then he spent years deliberately improving his playing until he was ready.
“Your dreams aren't impossible,” he says. “They just take work.”
For the kid who once picked up a fiddle mostly because it got him out of math class, it's worked out pretty well.
Now he just needs the rest of us to get up and dance.
*at posting, Joseph was waiting to hear whether he made it into the top 20 fiddlers at the 2026 Grand Masters.