Jazz Festivals and Theatre Firing Up Cities Menus

By William Doyle-Marshall

As usual, the City of Toronto and other cities across Canada are warming up with cultural activities designed to keep everyone involved. The diverse range spans music theatre arts, art, sculpture, dance, calypso, and the list goes on, Multi award winning trumpeter Brownman and his musical entourage will be appearing at 15 different locations around Toronto during this year’s Toronto Jazz Festival which runs through July 2.

In an exclusive interview recently with Indo Caribbean News the Trinidad-born musician and bandleader expressed a burning desire to see more Canadian bands featured on the main stage of the festival. While Brownman announced proudly that he is busy during the festival, he noted none of his gigs are on the main stage of the Toronto Jazz Festival which he considered “kind of weird”.

  “They don’t really support local artists. They put a handful of local guys on the main stage but really they’re saving their money to pay for the big names or the super stars so not much is left over for local support. Usually it’s a poor showing of local talent on the main stage but everybody runs into a club. So if you want to see Toronto talent during the Toronto Jazz Festival you got to go to the clubs. It’s about selling tickets and putting hums in seats,” Brownman remarked.”

Legendary super-group, KC and The Sunshine Band kicked off the festivities with a free concert marking the TD Toronto Jazz Festival launch of its 30th edition, Friday, June 24 at Nathan Phillips Square. With official DJ and hosting duties by Canada’s hip-hop ambassador, Kardinal Offishall, opening night featured the Heavyweights Brass Band and a special performance with a Swing vs. Street dance-off like Toronto had never seen before!

   The Brownman Akoustic Trio performs July 1 Second Cup Coffee Co. 287-289 King Street West. The Festival is expanding its footprint and by partnering, for the first time, with Second Cup Coffee Co. at the new concept café at King Street and John Street. “Programming will be chosen to reflect the contemporary and laidback environment, showcasing the wide variety of jazz being performed in Toronto year-round,” festival promo promises. Joe Sealy, June Bunnette, Hilario Duran, Molly Johnson, Toronto Mass Choir, Tanika Charles, Rhythm and Truth; We Came to Get Down: Swing vs. Street; Bill King Express and  are among Canadian performers booked to appear during the festival.

   Another Jazz event which attracted music lovers took place in Calgary, Alberta, where among the genres showcased was a taste of Latin offerings. Kodi Hutchinson, artist director of Calgary Jazz YYC Festival concurred that Jazz is such a wide ranging music that it’s really important having groups like that as part of the festival. Jazz is not just swing. It’s not just straight ahead. It’s really a vast diverse genre and there are quite a few Cuban groups in Alberta, Hutchinson concluded.

“Class In Session! Don’t Forget Your Eraser.” This Homeland Collective production will be premiering at the 2016 Toronto Fringe Festival, this summer, from June 29 – July 10. During the period of the festival Eraser can be seen at Westside Montessori School, 95 Bellevue Avenue, Toronto. It is a site-specific physical theatre show, set in a downtown Toronto school. From kindergarten to grade six, the performers explore immigration, bullying, puberty, first crushes, racism, and queer family structures. This is Producer Winnie Nwakobi’s first show as a  producer. However, she is no stranger to the business having tastes as director, producer and performer. Last year, she directed 'The Vagina Monologues' at York University. Ms Nwakobi has also been part of The Paprika Festival for 3 years, where she produced, wrote and performed 3 different shows with other artists. She is also currently a Youth Link Artist with Canada’s highly successful Soulpepper Theatre Company.

   Eraser’s performers are some of Toronto’s rising talent who are sure to make you laugh and cry as you are transported back in time when pencils and erasers were among your best companions. “Once we become adults it is easy to forget our roots and earliest influences. Children are often thought of as innocent. Through our explorations, we have uncovered the depth, complexities and traumas that hide beneath this layer of innocence,” the collective promises

    Eraser, directed by Sadie Epstein-Fine and Elise LaCroix, features an outstanding 6-person ensemble: Moe Baloch; Christol Bryan; Deanna Galati; Victoria Gubiani; Michael Pintucci; Nathan Redburn. The creative team is comprised of Aman Banwait (Sound Design); Jocelyn Graham (Costume/Set Design); Zack Lovetime (Stage Manager); Madeleine Monteleone (Stage Manager);  Winnie Nwakobi (Producer); Molly Thomas (Dramaturg); Cole Vincent (Lighting Design).

   Meanwhile, members of the Caribbean community are gearing up for their big summer cultural extravaganza which showcases carnival costumes along the streets of the City of Toronto and calypsonians are sharpening their performance skills to entertain audiences between now and the end of July.

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Grandmothers for Africa

Grandmothers Pushing Ahead for African Counterparts

By William Doyle-Marshall

Members of Victoria Grand Mothers for Africa headed by Christine Scott, are busy working on their fundraising plans in support of ventures on the African continent. The Victoria Grand Mothers had their seventh annual walk along the streets of downtown Victoria, British Columbia late in May. There were more than 50 walkers who journeyed from Centennial Park to the grounds of the legislature. It is the tenth anniversary of the Grand Mothers to Grand Mothers campaign. Due to serious personal family commitments some of the 100 members were unable to participate this year but the organizing committee was pleased to have 54 participants.  In addition to walking, people who can’t participate physically, make donations on line – www.victoriagrandmothersforafrica.ca

   Ten years ago Elizabeth McAuley, chair of the Stride Walk  organizing committee recalled , Grand Mothers from Africa were brought to Toronto and a few women from Victoria watched the event via television. “I know that I went to my church and said ‘we have to do something. We have to start a group or do something’ and other people in the city were doing the same thing and eventually we had two groups – the Carry on Grannies and the Victoria Grand Mothers for Africa.” Victoria is not a very big city the two organizations were going after the same people all the time so the Carry On Grannies suggested to the Victoria Grand Mothers for Africa that they join up with them and become simply the Victoria Grand Mothers for Africa. “That’s what happened and So that’s how it got started here,” McAuley reflected.

McAuley, who  chairs the Stride Walk for the Victoria Grandmothers for Africa, said it is one of over 240 grandmother groups across Canada that are raising money for the Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign of the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Through education and fundraising they support the plight of African Grandmothers in sub-Saharan Africa who take care of their orphaned grandchildren. This is the result of the HIV Pandemic which affected the African continent resulting in deaths of many parents who left young children. Since 2006 the campaign has raised under $25 million. Their various creative ways of fundraising include bake sales, African dinners, scrabble tournament, craft sales, fabric and plant sales, chocolate truffle sales and cycle tours.

   As McAuley urged walkers to get on with the Saturday morning assignment she urged them to “hold our dear African sisters in your hearts. These women walk many miles with purpose every day in the heat, to attend far away clinics and markets, to collect water and deliver grandchildren safely to school, to provide urgent home based care, as well as to protest violations of their human rights.”

                                            Elizabeh McAuley, Walk Chair, flaned by supporters

 The next big event in the year-long fundraising drive is a two and a half days cycle tour from Campbell River to Victoria. At the moment the plan is to have 30 riders aged between 55 and late seventies. Last year’s cycle tour raised $86,000 and Elizabeth McAuley, event chair,  hopes to do better this time around. There is a group out in Sidney; there are groups up the Island who support the cycle ride. They will sometimes provide riders and they also provide refreshments all the way down the road from Campbell River down.

   Next spring the Victoria Grandmothers for Africa will host an African dinner. Last year’s dinner raised $23,000 after expenses. An African Chef named Castro has taken on the organization’s dinner as his special project

A few years ago Paola Gianturco produced a book “Grandmother Power – a Global Phenomenon – published by Power House Books of Brooklyn, New York. In it she highlight efforts by Grandmothers in Africa and around the world as thy struggled to care for their children. Their bold efforts served as an inspiration for the coffee table book. One significant project was by illiterate and semi-illiterate grandmothers who returned home to provide solar energy to light their villages