So Long Seven in the yurt
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The first Global Toronto Conference took a four-day
weekend recently to revivify artistic and commercial attitudes toward exposing
the sounds of Toronto’s complexly interrelated cultural communities to
international and national world music audiences alike.
The focus of the event was
twofold. Presenting rich and stylistically diverse samples of our music in
memorable venues was, of course, of primary value in proving the intense
effects that vividly fresh musical experiences can have on an audience of tune
seekers. The second aspect of the conference focussed on the future horizons of
a synthesized and forward-thinking combined communal ethnicity. A trade forum
was put in place to solve some of the traditional impasses that Canada presents
to itself. With the absence of a unified presenter constituency and the long
standing class-based infrastructures that give favour to established art forms,
there was much to talk about and begin to creatively resolve. A presentation
about the electronic enhancement and transformation of traditional sounds also
drew out a strong community of learners and post-global artists.
On the stormy Friday
afternoon of the conference, an expedition of musical tourists congregated at
the Aga Khan Museum, which is a grandly designed repository of Muslim culture
at the northern end of the city. The venue extended its hospitality in the form
of a superb auditorium and, in its central courtyard, a round tent typically used as
a dwelling by nomads in the steppes of Central Asia: a yurt.
As Blisk began warming up for a Balkan
and Slavic song fest in the yurt, I had to exit for the Orbit, but Elizabeth Szekeres at `Roots Music Canada reports: “Blisk is a synthesis of polyphonic Balkan and Slavic song, dance and movement, backed by hypnotic percussion. The band consists of four ladies wearing colourful embroidery, hand-woven scarves, and floral skirts, embellished with funky traditional jewellery.
The sometimes bewildering
time signatures did not keep the band from moving deep into grooves of sensual urgency,
especially when under the guidance of Peruvian / Canadian Aline Morales and
Montreal’s Burkina Faso expat, Lasso. Dorjee Tsering’s joyous promenade from
Tibet, tar player Padideh Ahrarnejad’s blue wail from Iran, an epic stampede
theme from native Canadian Alyssa Delbaere Sawchuk and various whispers of angels and goddesses, frothing
with solos - all rose into the matrices of a truly boundless expression of what
seems like the planet itself willing this group on to further projections.
Saturday night for the first CD release party of KUNÉ, our own global orchestra, fusing
eleven musical traditions (and twenty-five instruments) into an ear-spinning
confection of leaping melodies and luscious timbres.
Originally published at Roots Music Canada
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