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Harboufront Centre summer music announced
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 […]
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May 21: “An Evening (and afternoon) for Bazou”
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 […]
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Afropop: “The Field Recordings of Hugh Tracey”
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 […]
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Happy 100th Birthday to Big Joe Turner
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 […]
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Event notes
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 […]
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New rap star: Muamar Gaddafi
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 […]
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Afrofest 2011 confirmed in Queen’s Park
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. […]
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Trane Studio struggling for survival
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 […]
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CKLN off the air for now & needs help
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 […]