Soulful music of struggle took the stage at La Sala Rossa with Naomi Shelton and The Gospel Queens performing for this year’s Pop Montreal festival. Authentic music to the core, Shelton’s ruff but beautiful vocals speak to an American musical history intimately bound to a century of struggle for civil rights and equality in the US, a story woven into many of America’s most profound cultural voices of the past century.
In the present context Shelton’s sound speaks to a well-crafted indie revival of soul music that contrasts recent decades of corporate-programmed digital sound. Flickers of the 21st century soul music resurgence are immediately apparent in the striking success of Daptone Records, Shelton’s record label based in Brooklyn, New York.
Did anyone catch the Polaris Music Prize award show on MuchMusic, Canada’s music television station? No? Of course you didn’t. Because despite the fact that was hosted by some of MuchMusic’s personalities, it was relegated to a live feed on the channel’s website.
Granted, the show will be aired on the main MuchMusic channel on Saturday, but its placement and rerun status suggests that it’s an afterthought. I guess they couldn’t find any space in a packed Monday night schedule of three Gossip Girl re-runs; two Degrassi episodes; a show called Pants On, Pants Off; and the painful Video On Trial. Groan.
Education is a backbone to any society. Across the world social movements are struggling for accessible public education in the face of economic ‘austerity’ measures administered by neoliberal budgetary knifes. Budgets for public educational institutions are being too often sacrificed for corporate tax cuts, driving both the access to and quality of education down for the people.
In Canada, as the cost of quality post secondary education rises, the Conservative government is moving to cut the corporate tax rates to 15 per cent by 2012. Canada will then have the lowest tax rate for corporations in G7 major economies, reducing annual government revenues by $14-billion, as our schools, universities and society generally is forced to walk a financial tightrope in times of economic crisis.
Serious questions on our collective future must be raised as education is under the gun across the world. Beyond the hollowing out of public education through budgetary attacks, access to education is also becoming eroded by war.
OK, so maybe OK Go is not the most political band out there. And maybe I’m just looking for an excuse to post an adorably cute dog video. But the band’s support of animal resue organizations is definitely worthy of mention.
Iraqi hip hop artist The Narcicyst has released a new video for his single Hamdulillah, and it is simply stunning.
Directed and edited by Ridwan Adhami, and featuring Palestinian singer Shadia Mansour, the video is a beautiful montage of initimate portraits of people from a dozen different cities across the globe.
Delving head first into social issues is old hat to Peter, Paul and Mary, whose popular and progressive folk music provided a running social commentary during the 1960s. The trio remained prolific activists throughout the decades, so it is of little suprise that the surviving members, Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey, would find themselves in the middle of the gay marriage debate that continues to rage in the United States.
The National Organization for Marriage — one of the leading anti-gay marriage groups in the United States — recently held scores of public rallies during their “Summer for Marriage” tour, inflaming homophobic sentiments across America. During their events, NOM blared Peter, Paul & Mary’s popular version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land“, without the permission of the artists.
An Arabic version of this article was published in the Beirut-based Al Adab cultural journal.
Weaving together diverse musical traditions that span oceans, Montreal-based composer and musician Sam Shalabi offers a distinctive sound, rooted in contemporary musical experimentation but also inspired by the popular orchestras that took a cultural center stage in Egypt in the late 1960s.
Impressive in scope, Land of Kush, the latest music ensemble project orchestrated by Shalabi, explores new musical boundaries while combining artistic practice from the Middle East and North America.
As headlines of war often shape mainstream media coverage on the Middle East in the West, Shalabi’s music presents an artistic front embodying a complex and interconnected relationship between cultures, rooted in creative ties that influence the identity of both societies.
Delving head first into social issues is old hat to Peter, Paul and Mary, whose popular and progressive folk music provided a running social commentary during the 1960s. The trio remained prolific activists throughout the decades, so it is of little suprise that the surviving members, Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey, would find themselves in the middle of the gay marriage debate that continues to rage in the United States.
