Nolan, Faith

Websites:  https://www.faithnolan.org/
Origin: Halifax, Nova Scotia → Toronto, Ontario, 🇨🇦
Biography:

Faith Nolan is a trailblazing Afro-Nova Scotian Mi'kmaq-Irish singer-songwriter, musician, activist, and community builder whose work spans music, prison justice, feminism, Indigenous rights, and education. With a powerful voice rooted in blues, jazz, folk, gospel, and reggae traditions, Nolan has spent over four decades using music as a vehicle for political resistance and social healing.

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and raised partly in Toronto’s Cabbagetown, Nolan draws from a rich lineage of Black Canadian cultural expression. Her lyrics give voice to working-class struggles, Afro-Canadian history, Indigenous survival, and women's resistance. She is a self-taught guitarist and multi-instrumentalist (slide guitar, harmonica, banjo, tambourine), whose live performances are as emotionally raw as they are musically masterful.

Faith Nolan emerged as a solo artist in the 1980s with early albums like Africville (1986) and Sistership (1987), bold recordings that reclaim suppressed Canadian Black history while celebrating sisterhood and collective strength. Her later albums, such as Freedom to Love and Hard to Imagine, continue this tradition of activist art, tackling themes like poverty, incarceration, and queer liberation.

Beyond her solo work, Nolan is a prolific community organizer. She is the founder and current director of the Vanier Music Therapy Program, and previously founded the Women’s Music Therapy Program at both the CECC and CNCC correctional facilities (2008–2014). In 1991, she created Joint Effort, a prison-based music and arts initiative that continues to empower incarcerated women through creative expression.

Throughout her career, Nolan has founded or directed multiple community choirs, including the Sistering Singers, Mandela Children’s Choir, Voices of Freedom, and the Kingston Women Prisoners Choir in the late 1980s. Between 2006 and 2009, she also collaborated with the Elementary Teachers of Toronto, producing two full-length CDs.

A founding member of the Black Women’s Collective (1984), Our Lives Newspaper (1986), and Sisters Café (1991), she has played pivotal roles in progressive organizing in Toronto and across Canada. She helped lead MWIC (Multicultural Women in Concert) beginning in 1983 and contributed to WRPM (Women’s Revolutionary Music Production and distribution). She has also served on the board of Mayworks Toronto and was a member of the People’s Music Network (PMN) alongside Charlie King and Pete Seeger.

Whether performing internationally—in Nigeria, Japan, the Netherlands, the Caribbean, England, or across North America—or singing in support of local grassroots causes, Nolan’s commitment to justice is unwavering. Her music bridges cultures and movements, blending searing critiques of inequality with messages of healing and hope.

Faith Nolan's artistry and activism have earned her a devoted following, but more importantly, they’ve helped build and sustain communities where music is not just entertainment—but a tool of liberation.

"Music is a powerful tool that can be used for political and cultural expression," says Nolan. And few artists have wielded that tool with as much clarity, compassion, and courage.
-Robert Williston