Comm-Unification: Toronto Reggae Conference Apr. 29, 2018
In the fifty years since reggae music began to germinate on Canadian soil, the community that supports it has shown demonstrable ingenuity in publicizing and presenting itself to an ever-increasing fan base. Its combination of aggressive street-level marketing, immediate radio ...
Georgian Bay – “Canyon” (video)
We talk a lot about mental illness these days and the need to end the stigma around it. But with one song and video, Toronto-based duo Georgian Bay has moved well past all that. Their new song, “Canyon,” is an ...
Lenka Lichtenberg returns to her Czech roots on Masaryk
Over the course of the past 20 years, Toronto’s Lenka Lichtenberg has established herself as one of Canada’s foremost Yiddish singers and composers. The daughter of a Czech survivor of the Terezin concentration camp who had raised her with no connection to ...
Folk Alliance International reveals details about Montreal conference in Feb.
A significant, almost suspicious number of folk folks were noticed rootsing around in broad daylight at the Rivoli on Toronto’s Queen Street West on the Friday afternoon of Canadian Music Week. Scoop is that Folk Alliance International will be holding ...
A new album revives the songs of Soviet Jews persecuted ...
It was the early 2000s. University of Toronto Yiddish Studies professor Anna Shternshis was in Kiev doing research for a book on Yiddish culture during the Second World War. She was searching through libraries for archival documents to supplement ...
Canadian Music Week: What’s in it for roots artists?
Canadian Music Week kicks off today, and with it, showcases featuring more than 800 artists from across Canada and around the world. (We’ve highlighted a few of the roots acts here.) CMW bills itself as “one of the premier entertainment ...
The Hugh’s Room Live birthday bash: a night in ...
When the beloved Toronto folk and roots venue Hugh’s Room closed down abruptly in January of last year, a devoted committee of music lovers raised more than $100,000 to bring it back. It reopened just four months later, and last ...
Jon Brooks – “Todos Caminamos Por Este Caminito”
“No One Travels Alone is a contrite apology to my 138 super fans the world over for 2014’s murder ballads album, The Smiling & Beautiful Countryside,” Jon Brooks told me in an email this week. I had to smile. Countryside ...
The Young Novelists – In City & Country
From the outside, the new record by The Young Novelists, In City & Country, is a lyrical investigation of small town Ontario life and its (in)compatibility with the big city escape hatch. On a deeper level, it’s about not being ...
Canadian Music Week: a cross-Canada road-trip in 10 roots ...
You’ve found yourself with a pass to Canadian Music Week. Now all you have to do is find some great Canadian roots music to go see – not an easy task when the line-up features more than 800 showcasing artists representing ...