Monthly Archives: May 2011

Harboufront Centre summer music announced

  May 20, 2011 - 9:58 pm |
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One of the treats of summer: great music by the lake. Today, Harbourfront announced the lineups for the 2011 “Hot Spot Summer” music lineup. Lots of interesting and unique performers coming; details are in a press release posted here, and the main festival webpage is here. The theme weekends are: NXNE, Jun. 11-12 Franco-Fête, Jun 24-26 Canada Day, Jul. 1 Luke Doucet & The White Falcon On the Pulse, Jul. 2 Corazon de México, Jul. 8-10 Colombian Colours, Jul. 15-17 Tirgan Iranian Festival, Jul 21-24 Calypso Stars Showcase, Jul 27 Island Soul, Jul 29-Aug 1 What’s Classical, Aug 5-7 Fortune … Continue reading →

May 21: “An Evening (and afternoon) for Bazou”

  May 20, 2011 - 3:26 am |
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On Saturday, May 21, Njacko Backo & Valery Woloshyn are hosting their second benefit for École St. Albert Le Grand, the school Njacko attended as a child in Bazou Cameroon. The money raised from last year’s event provided some urgently needed infrastructure repairs to the school, and also funded the purchase of some traditional African instruments. This year’s event will help provide sanitation facilities including the rebuilding of latrines and construction of a handwashing station. This year, there are two different events. The afternoon (3-5pm) is a children’s event with  Soli & Rob with Alistair Ant!, Marni’s Move-in Music, Bellwoods … Continue reading →

Afropop: “The Field Recordings of Hugh Tracey”

  May 20, 2011 - 2:11 am | ,
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Afropop Worldwide’s “Hip Deep” feature focused last week on the pioneer English musicologist Hugh Tracey who over half a century, beginning in the 1920’s, extensively recorded and catalogued African music, especially from Southern Africa. His fascination with Zimbabwean mbira music led him to manufacture a variation of the similar African kalimba. His version became known as the “Hugh Tracey kalimba” (An appropriate note to be written two days before Njacko Backo and his group Kalimba Kalimba head a multi-artist benefit show at the Gladstone on May 21. See separate post). In 1954, Tracey founded the International Library of African Music, … Continue reading →

Happy 100th Birthday to Big Joe Turner

  May 19, 2011 - 12:02 pm | , ,
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Slightly belated congratulations to the greatest of the blues shouters, who was born in Kansas City on May 18, 1911.  I’m sure Joe won’t mind me being a day late, as he’s been playing a steady gig in R&B heaven since 1985. He started singing on the streets & in church, and later became known as The Singing Barman.  He and partner/pianist Pete Johnson ended up performing in the first of John Hammond’s “Spiritual to Swing” concerts at Carnegie Hall in 1938, and the pair made their first record the next year, “Roll ‘Em, Pete”. It seems a big jump … Continue reading →

Event notes

  May 6, 2011 - 7:21 pm | ,
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Event listings (www.events.to-music.ca) have been updated. A few upcoming shows of note: Tonight (May 6) a rare chance to see music from Equatorial Guinea featuring Anastasio & Zalang Band in a free show at the Melody Bar, Gladstone Hotel. 1214 Queen W., 7-10pm. Part of “Gladstone World” co-presented with Batuki Music. Details on Facebook May 7-15: Toronto Jewish Film Festival. As Hot Docs winds down, this winds up, and it always features some music-themed films. This year’s include: “The Three Lenny’s”: a series of films featuring and about Leonard Cohen, Leonard Bernstein and satirist Lenny Bruce. Also, look for The … Continue reading →

New rap star: Muamar Gaddafi

  May 6, 2011 - 6:26 pm | ,
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He may be a murderer and war criminal, but one of the hot music videos out there, is “Zenga Zenga”, performed by none other than the crackpot criminal himself. The video was created back in February making use of one of his early threatening speeches against the protesters, when he vowed to wipe them out “inch by inch, room  by room, home by home, alley by alley”. An Israeli journalist & musician, Noy Alooshe, watched the speech and  thought Gaddafi’s appearance, gestures and speech looked like something out of a trance party. He put out a video with Auto-Tune technology, … Continue reading →

Afrofest 2011 confirmed in Queen’s Park

  May 6, 2011 - 5:37 pm |
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Announcement today from Music Africa: Music Africa is happy to officially announce that Afrofest 2011 will be taking place at Queen's Park on July 9th and 10th.   Full details of the 2011 festival will be announced soon.   Music Africa thanks all Afrofest fans for their great support and patience these last few months. See you at Afrofest!     Discover Africa in the Heart of Toronto   www.musicafrica.org   Michael Stohr President, Music Africa    

Trane Studio struggling for survival

  May 6, 2011 - 12:06 pm |
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The following note comes from the Trane Studio, the great small music club on Bathurst which is a great booster of music and art, focusing in particular on jazz plus African, Latin, world & urban musics. It temporarily lost its liquor license last year, and has been fighting its way through a bureacratic mess to try to get it restored.  Everyone knows that the business of live entertainment means that small venues need liquor sales to make any profits. Read their note below: Dear Trane Studio family, friends and supporters, It has been nearly 1 year (July 2010) since the … Continue reading →

CKLN off the air for now & needs help

  May 6, 2011 - 11:51 am |
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Toronto’s first community station is now off the air, having heard last month that the Federal Court of Appeal will not hear the station’s appeal of the CRTC decision to revoke their broadcasting license. That decision forced the station off the air immediately. However, the Chair of the station’s board of directors says CKLN intends to come back. “We aren’t even close to being out of the picture yet. There are options. And when there’s a will and community support, there’s a way”. This is a great loss to Toronto’s airwaves. For more information, including what you can do to … Continue reading →