CFMA's 2017 ~ Folk Summit on the Rideau

A fake statistician could theoretically make the case that Canadians are more familiar with the live performance of folk music than with any other style. We winter in dens where guitars, accordions and fiddles feather those gatherings drawn to fireplaces and craft beers and the supreme summer souvenir is often a shot of a dear one, singing into a bonfire with a song by a Gord or a Joni or a Joel incandescent in their eyes, and their friend with a harmonica huddling in for a photo bomb.  


Celebrating this most social of empathetic arts is the delightful duty of the Canadian Folk Music Awards, which pops up in major cities on the brink of winter every year for the past dozen years. I shall be journeying up to the nation's upper case as the event returns to Ottawa this weekend, regretfully abandoning my show for another week. Many friends of the Orbit are contestants and performers. My friend, award-winning photographer Leonard Poole will be capturing the action for the blog.

 I will be back on the 24th with a studio visit from Kevin Breit and a sheaf of new Canadian music from the far folk frontiers.

The awards ceremony is broadcast here CFMA's 2017

Nominees

Traditional Album of the Year

• Cassie and Maggie - The Willow Collection

• Jenny Whiteley - The Original Jenny Whiteley

• André Brunet - La grosse maison rouge

• Còig - Rove

• Jayme Stone - Jayme Stone's Folklife

Contemporary Album of the Year

• Abigail Lapell - Hide Nor Hair

• The Fretless - Bird's Nest

• Tomato Tomato - I Go Where You Go

• Leif Vollebekk - Twin Solitude

• Braden Gates - Much Rather Be Sleeping

Children’s Album of the Year

• Ginalina - Home Is Family

• Jessie Farrell - Chirp Chirp Happy

• Stella Swanson and the Rosie Joyfuls - Pants on Backwards

• Madame Diva et Micah le jeune voyageur - Zing-E-Zing!

• Fred Penner - Hear The Music

Traditional Singer of the Year

• Hannah Shira Naiman - Know The Mountain

• Cassie and Maggie - The Willow Collection

• Mélisande Gelinas-Fauteux (of Mélisande [Électrotrad]) - Les millésimes

• Sarah Jane Scouten - When the Bloom Falls From the Rose

• Dave Penny - All Turned Around

Contemporary Singer of the Year

• Lisa LeBlanc - Why You Wanna Leave, Runaway Queen?

• Coco Love Alcorn - Wonderland

• Abigail Lapell - Hide Nor Hair

• Stephen Fearing - Every Soul's A Sailor

• Oh Susanna - A Girl In Teen City

Instrumental Solo Artist of the Year

• Roberto López - Criollo Electrik

• Maneli Jamal - The Mardom Movement

• Glenn Chatten - Dragonfly

• André Brunet - La grosse maison rouge

• Don Ross - A Million Brazilian Civilians

Instrumental Group of the Year

• MacIsaac and MacKenzie - The Bay Street Sessions

• The Fretless - Bird's Nest

• Beyond The Pale - Ruckus

• Natalie MacMaster & Donnell Leahy - A Celtic Family Christmas

• Scott Macmillan & Colin Grant - Good2Go

English Songwriter of the Year

• Ken Yates - Huntsville

• Scott Cook - Further Down the Line

• Amelia Curran - Watershed

• Stephen Fearing - Every Soul's A Sailor

• Oh Susanna - A Girl In Teen City

French Songwriter of the Year

• Luc De Larochellière - Autre monde

• Philippe B - La grande nuit vidéo

• Vivianne Roy, Katrine Nöel & Julie Aubé (of Les Hay Babies) - La 4ième dimension (version longue)

• Patrice Michaud - Almanach

• Catherine Durand - La pluie entre nous

Aboriginal Songwriter of the Year

• Julian Taylor, Kinnie Starr, John Parente & Bill Bell (of Julian Taylor Band) - Desert Star

• Cindy Paul - The Flight

• Chelsey June & Jaaji (of Twin Flames) - Signal Fire

• Desiree Dorion - Tough Street

• Lisa Muswagon - Buffalo and Rabbits

Vocal Group of the Year

• The Big East - Hungry Ghosts

• Coco Méliès - The Riddle

• Cassie and Maggie - The Willow Collection

• Twin Flames - Signal Fire

• The Bombadils - New Shoes

Ensemble of the Year

• Cassie and Maggie - The Willow Collection

• Silent Winters - Fireworks & a Small Brigade

• 100 mile house - Hiraeth

• The Jerry Cans - Inuusiq

• Mama's Broke - Count the Wicked

Solo Artist of the Year

• Zachary Lucky - Everywhere A Man Can Be

• BEYRIES - Landing

• Amelia Curran - Watershed

• Leeroy Stagger - Love Versus

• Stephen Fearing - Every Soul's A Sailor

World Solo Artist of the Year

• Briga - Femme

• Maneli Jamal - The Mardom Movement

• Louis Simão - A Luz (The Light)

• Farnaz Ohadi & The Mashregh Ensemble - Bird Dance

• Kelly Bado - Entre deux

World Group of the Year

• MAZ - ID

• Kobo Town - Where The Galleon Sank

• Turkwaz - Nazar

• Twin Flames - Signal Fire

• Beyond The Pale - Ruckus

New/Emerging Artist of the Year

• Ken Yates - Huntsville

• Hidden Roots Collective - Come Up, Honey

• Braden Gates - Much Rather Be Sleeping

• Silent Winters - Fireworks & a Small Brigade

• The Bombadils - New Shoes

Producer of the Year

• Danny Michel and Rob Carli - Khlebnikov (Danny Michel)

• Joel Plaskett - Solidarity (Bill & Joel Plaskett)

• Amelia Curran and Chris Stringer - Watershed (Amelia Curran)

• Stephen Fearing and David Travers-Smith - Every Soul's A Sailor (Stephen Fearing)

• Jim Bryson - A Girl In Teen City (Oh Susanna)

Pushing the Boundaries

• Danny Michel - Khlebnikov

• Turkwaz - Nazar

• Tanya Tagaq - Retribution

• Mélisande [Électrotrad] - Les millésimes

• Shreem - Celtic Remixing

Young Performer of the Year

• The Wolfe - The Wolfe

• Keltie Monaghan - Someone Tell Her

• John Muirhead - Yesterday's Smile

• Quin Etheridge-Pedden - Embark

• Moscow Apartment - Demo

Kim Beggs ~ Said Little Sparrow Review

                              

A straight path never leads anywhere except to the objective. - André Gide

Comes the cold weather and here’s Kim Beggs with a boiling remedy.

Said Little Sparrow is an ornate ceramic cup of songs, self-produced, hand-painted and flashing with guitar constellations, but gooey with dark caramel fiddles and weissenborns and lemony lyrics on the inside, shimmering with reverb and as hot as a fevered night sweat.

She brings us tales from the roadside of love, and the brink of forgiveness, sharing her terrors and comforts through a special recipe of images, memories and incidents. She carries us down the tailings trough of her ever-wandering life story, scooping out nuggets of narrative that glisten in the listener's ear. 

With cautionary history lessons, in Blister and Hurts The Worst, mystery lessons, in Heart In A Bucket and Frozen Horizon, and the absolute ice of her startling interpretation of See That My Grave Is Kept Clean, Kim Beggs opens our hearts with the subdued gaiety and confidence of her voice and the authoritative solidarity of her hand-picked musical team. Burke Carroll`s pedal steel, Sam Allison`s banjo and John Showman`s fiddle all galvanize the nighttime crispness with shades of melancholy, while the pathways are surveyed and lit clearly by the familiar rhythm section of Brian Kobayakawa, Michelle Josef, Justin Haynes and David Baxter. Golden lacing is added by the harmonies of Oh Susana and Nicole Edwards and by the metallurgic magic of David Travers-Smith`s mix.

Kim is in full control of her musical hospice, which she runs as a low barrier drop-in, with lyrics and chord instructions cheerfully provided for conflict resolution and harm reduction. The meticulous booklet is also a family album and gallery guide, tucked inside a triple gatefold artisanal jacket. 

With a cross country ramble almost completed, Kim and her road compadre Marcel Desilets have been carrying these songs from town to town across the country as a duo. Jump soon to find them and hear them. Or for those who prefer to stay at home to get well with rest and liquids, there is a video of lead song Vampire Love Song recently debuted.

Kim tells her stories in a roundabout way that keeps the listener`s  ears alive and alert and returning to 
Said Little Sparrow 
for extra encouragement and release.


 Keep on stirring and it will fix you up fine.

   Listen And Buy Here At Kim Beggs' Store

Kim at Radio Regent Studio September 2017 
Podcast : Kim Beggs on Corby's Orbit September 2017 

Howard, Harley & Haram ~ Today's Show Would Have Been The Bomb Du Jour

But I have to cancel today's show. I started going viral yesterday, in the worst possible ways, so for the first time in 16 years of radio I'll have to postpone visits and interviews from some of Canada`s very finest musicians...

Gord Grdina's Haram will be at Aga Khan Museum next Saturday 18 November. Inflammatory improvisations orchestrated Iraqi folk tunes and mystic melodies. 




Howard Gladstone's Hourglass gets another spin at Gate 403 Saturday from 5-8 p.m. No cover! Laura Fernandez and Tony Quarrington are giving the album the trio treatment.And Harley Card's new record, The Greatest Invention gets its first Toronto performance, 9:30 at The Rex on Sunday evening.
And I am at home under blankets until such time...

Playlist For Corby`s Orbit Show Of 3 November

Commissioner of Selection: Paul Corby 

(Brought to you by Culmination Locks, Safety Deposit Rocks and Stocks 'n' Bondage) 

Guests: Mark Kelso, Shawna Caspi and Nick MacLean

5-7 p.m. Fridays online http://www.radioregent.com/ and at tunein.com .  

Podcast here https://www.mixcloud.com/paul-corby/

Canadians in Asterisk’d RED. 

5:00 Folk Castle

* Craig Cardiff ~ Scott Merrit's Radio Home ~ Ginger's On Barrington (2003) @ Market Hall Peterborough Friday 17 November and @ Hugh's Room Live 15 December

* Kaia Kater ~ White ~ Nine Pin ~ @ The Local Sunday 2 p.m.

* Stan Rogers ~ The Idiot ~ The Very Best Of... (Borealis) ~ Stan Rogers Tribute @ Hugh's Room Live Friday 10 November 

* Deep Dark Woods ~ Teardrops Fell ~ Yarrow  NEW DISK @ The Great Hall tonight

* Elliott Brood ~ Cadillac Dust ~ Tin Type~ @ Horseshoe tonight & Saturday

* Kat Goldman ~ The One To Dream ~ Workingman's Blues NEW DISK ~ @ Hugh's Room Live Sunday

5:30 Exiles From Mainstream

* Mark Kelso & The Jazz Exiles ~ The Antrim Shuffle / Interview with Mark Kelso / Zig Zag ~ Elementals NEW DISK

5:40 Caspionage

* Shawna Caspi ~ Devil's Rolling Pin / Brave Parade / Interview / Never Enough (live) ~ Forest Fire NEW DISK ~ @ Burdock 

Jessie Reyez feat. Li'l Yachty ~  Fakin' It ~ Funk Wav. Bounces Vol. 1 ~ Li'l Yachty @ Rebel Sunday

6:00 Elevatoronto

Snarky Puppy ~ What About Me? ~ We Like It Here ~ Snaggle's Snarky Puppy Tribute @ Junction Music Hall Friday 10 November

* Nick MacLean Quartet ~ Elasticity Of Time And Space / Interview with Nick MacLean / Tell Me A Bedtime Story ~ Rites Of Ascension NEW DISK ~ CD Release @ The Rex Sunday19 November 9:30

6:30 Myriad Piece

Jhelisa ~ Galactica Rush ~ Jhelisa (Dorado 1994)

* Kae Sun ~ Lion On A Leash ~ Music Africa Presents Afrofest 2010 @ Mundial Montreal on Nov.15th at Petit Campus

Hadouk Trio ~ Lokembe-Vole ~ Baldamore (Naive 2007)

* Chris Wallace ~ The First Card ~ Somewhere Sacred  NEW DISK  / TORONTO MUSIC LISTINGS

* David Myles ~ Look At Me ~ Real Love NEW DISK ~ @ Mod Club Wednesday  

* Sarah MacDougall ~ We're All Gonna Blow Away ~ The Greatest Ones Alive ~ @ The R.O.M. tonight

Hop Aboard As Exiles Excite, Shawna Alights, and Nick MacLean Springs The Rites.

On Corby's Orbit 3rd of November:

Groovy drummentator of massive credentials and legendary ears Mark Kelso will be paragliding into the Orbit early on Friday, around 5:30. His all-star band The Exiles has a fine new funky fusion record, Elementals, which should feature prominently on many Best of 2017 lists.

Painter, singer and songwriter Shawna Caspi is cleared for a landing on the helipad at 6:00. She is bringing a guitar along and is totally inflamed over her new CD's release event. The Forest Fire album breaks out with opener Kev Corbett Thursday, November 16, 8:30 PM at Burdock.

And at 6:30 we launch an investigation into the recent revolutionary evolution of temporarily un-Snaggled pianist Nick MacLean, who is preparing a recreational outing at The Rex in a few weeks for Rites Of Ascension 

featuring sax king Brownman Ali.

Uprooted: Major New Work From Minor Empire

Over the past six years, since their first album, 

Second Nature, won awards and accolades 

from a fascinated Canadian and international audience, 

the hands and hearts of Ozgu Ozman and Ozan Boz 

have been dedicated to fashioning a new transmission 

from the musical world they share as Minor Empire. 

And so, a new suite of songs, Uprooted, arrives this month, 

and it is a progression into new territories of elegant melody 

drifting over crackling dramatic landscapes of electronic 

pulsation. At the vanguard of Turkish-based music here in Canada, the duo has developed 

a unique mutualism that melds charismatic singing with the dark crystalline architecture 

of contemporary electro-funk. Uprooted launched on iTunes on October 26.

 To Listen And Buy Go Here

Throughout the record, modified vibrations emanate from Ozan’s guitar and intensely programmed sonic stylings, creating icy spatial realms, and periodically startling effects. These sounds inter-react with the unwinding incandescence of Ozgu’s vocal intaglios and the exotic acoustic tones of Patrick Graham’s taiko, bata, davul, darbuka, bendir and cymbals. Toronto’s Michael Occhipinti brings solar winds and shady breezes to his guitar imaginings and the sobbing bass of Chris Gartner underpins Ozgu’s sensual laments with an urgent organic intensity.

As the shamanic focus of the band, vocalist / lyricist Ozgu Ozman again reaches across the geography of her homeland, selecting techniques of expression from the vast vocabularies of the Balkan, Black Sea and other variegated Turkish cultures, and intuiting those which will translate traditional tropes into the vivid colours and desperate anguish of today’s nation. All are wound into a perfume of trills, glissandi and flights of improvisation that guide the listener along her sensually hypnotic harmonic pathways.

The prelude, Dinya / The World, comes shimmering in from a distance with Ozgu conjuring the rebirth of the world from her desire for just “a glimpse of your smile”. Its rich texture sets the tone for the theme of spiritual / romantic renewal that underpins the whole album. Echoes web the electric spaces framing the title track Yurtsuz / Uprooted. Rhythm cascades create arcs and arches for the wandering narrator to escape through into new worlds. 

The lyric describes the pilgrimage of a liberated spirit into the perilous new territory of freedom.

“In the nooks of this foreign world

I fooled myself with this dream of a life”

~ Yurtsuz

Central to the mood of the record is the theme of the disturbance of tranquility. 

The unnatural effect of being uprooted, this particular distress of the heart is the focus 

of the traditional songs that follow. In İki Keklik / Two Partridges, the dilemma of a 

passion which searches for an eternal beyond is mirrored in the patient heartbeat of the 

rhythm, while the melody explores blue-tinted questions of security and sincerity.

 And in Ağ Elime Mor Kınalar Yaktılar / They Put Henna in My Young Hands,

 the innocence of love is cut off by the hierarchies of tradition. 

Chambers of reverberating guitar, odd meters and quizzical electronic effects distort 

the simplicity of the melancholy narrator, and attempt to subvert her resolution, 

until, after a meditative acoustic kanun passage, she rallies with a hope for a better 

chance at fulfillment. 

Bahar / Spring, with a brief prelude of galvanized guitar drone entitled Seeds, brings a tidal 

rush of optimism at the midpoint of the album’s arc, which travels a path through stages of 

longing, questing for love, peace, and reunion. At each new bridge, Ozgu’s melody floats, 

restless but steadfastly expanding, over the turbulence of the relentless orchestration that 

surges and swirls beneath. Then the light of the sun, in Güneş Türküsü / Sun’s Song 

irradiates the listener with the rays of a sixties rock ballad. A slippery instrumental passage 

takes chromatic risks but ultimately delivers the vocalist to a new height of confidence.

The imperial tone of the intro to Green Handkerchief and reversion to a melodic minor key 

reprises the inevitable interference pattern that returns again to supplant the growth that 

the singer has been nurturing with complications. 

İstanbul’dan Üsküdar’a Yol Gider / Road From Istanbul to Uskudar begins the pilgrimage 

through a harsh landscape of fragmented emotions that wander from horror to helplessness 

as the world becomes too real and still more confusing to the spirit. A tone of lamentation 

then overcomes our troubadour as she casts her thoughts homeward over alternately 

sparkling and apocalyptic guitar in Selanik Türküsü / Song of Thessaloniki  and towards 

an attempt to balance resistance with an acceptance of destiny in the languid lyrics of 

Uyuttum Atları / I Put Horses to Sleep: 

“I gave the world my dreams

and they wanted to take my life.”

At the end of this cycle, there is only one destination left, as 

Tutam Yar Elinden / Wish I Could Hold Your Hand, 

resolves in the intuited peace that welcomes her beyond the confines of memory and 

earthly strife. Her voice fades into the ascending guitar and rises on waves of clattering

 drums into a new space, with, hopefully, roses and peace and a decisive final clarity.

Uprooted  takes the listener on a voyage of imagination. Always fearlessly rising, 

Minor Empire provides lush musical scenery and never succumbs to the perils of disaster and despair and doubt which plague those who remain rooted in the temporal plane, but persist towards another world that holds the promise of true soul nourishment, and a new home for hungry roots.

Minor Empire CD Launch At Hugh`s Room Live, Wednesday, 6 December 

$25 Advance / $30 At The Door 8:30 p.m.

Playlist For Show Of 27 October

Commissioner of Selection: Paul Corby 

(Brought to you by School & Cross-Bones, Global Warnings and Hot Toxics ) 

Guests Lizzy Hoyt, Joe Bowden, Lily Frost and Chris Wallace 

5-7 p.m. Fridays online http://www.radioregent.com/ and at tunein.com .  

Podcast here https://www.mixcloud.com/paul-corby/

Canadians in Asterisk’d RED. 

Photo by Joe Bowden

5:00 High Fiddle-Lady

* Over The Moon ~ You Didn't Even Know ~ Moondancer NEW DISK

* Lizzy Hoyt ~ Relentless / Interview /Medley: Jenny’s Welcome To Charlie / The New Custom House / Kylebrack Rambler (live) / White Feather (live) ~ New Lady On The Prairie 
~@ The Local Sunday 5 p.m.

5:20 Drum Antic Style

Courtney Barnett ~ Aqua Profunda! ~ Sometimes I Sit And Think And Sometimes I Just Sit ~ @ Massey Hall Tuesday 31 October 

* Joe Bowden ~ At Peace / Interview / Memories Of Cuba ~ Thank You For Listening NEW DISK ~ CD Release @ Canterbury Music Company Sunday 1-3 p.m.

5:40 Scare City

* CATL ~ Save Myself ~ This Shakin' House ~ @ The Dakota Sunday 

Danny Elfman ~ This Is Hallowe'en ~The Nightmare Before Christmas Sdtrk

James Cotton ~ Black Night ~ Harp Attack

* Turkwaz ~ Black Train Took My Beloved Away ~ Nazar ~ @ Lula Lounge Sunday

* Lily Frost ~ 747 / Interview ~ New Single ~ @ Lula Lounge Tuesday for Big City Social Hallowe'en Edition

6:15 Elucidated Hallucinations

Nneenna Freelon ~ Better Than Anything ~ Soulcall

* Chris Wallace's Many Names ~ Visitation / Interview / The Preston Changeling ~ Somewhere Sacred NEW DISK

Antoine "Fats" Domino (February 26, 1928 – October 24, 2017) ~ Boll Weevil / So Long ~ They Call Me The Fat Man : The Legendary Imperial Recordings

* The Band ~ Fats Domino's I'm Ready ~ Moondog Matinee 

Janet Jackson ~ Together Again (Jimmy Jam Deep Remix) ~ @ ACC Thursday 2 November                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Fats Domino by Pablo Lobato