{"id":148487,"date":"2010-08-10T15:51:31","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T15:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socancom100stg.wpenginepowered.com\/a-vital-and-vibrant-beat\/"},"modified":"2010-08-10T15:51:31","modified_gmt":"2010-08-10T15:51:31","slug":"a-vital-and-vibrant-beat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/a-vital-and-vibrant-beat\/","title":{"rendered":"A vital and vibrant beat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Les traductions pour les articles avant l\u2019automne 2013 ne sont pas disponibles pour le moment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nadine McNulty remembers well the day that K\u2019naan<\/strong> appeared at Toronto\u2019s Afrofest. The year was 2000 and McNulty, as artistic director, had booked the then-unknown Somali-Canadian rapper to appear in the afternoon on the main stage at the popular outdoor festival. Rain showers failed to dampen the crowd\u2019s enthusiasm for K\u2019naan, who performed with just one backup vocalist and a tape playback. Recalls McNulty: \u201cIt was drizzling and here was this young guy just kicking it in front of this sea of umbrellas. It\u2019s amazing to see how he\u2019s now taken the world by storm.\u201d<\/p>\n

K\u2019naan, this year\u2019s Juno Award winner for Songwriter and Artist of the Year, is a major Canadian star and international crossover act, from his globetrotting tours to the choice of his song \u201cWavin\u2019 Flag\u201d as the official anthem of the 2010 FIFA World Cup Trophy tour. While K\u2019naan\u2019s breakthrough is the highest profile ever achieved by a Canadian-based African musician, his success sheds light on the steady growth of African music in Canada. What began as a niche market, with a handful of homemade cassettes, has blossomed into a bona fide industry, with dozens of professionally recorded CDs and a healthy circuit of summer festivals (see sidebar).<\/p>\n

The earliest African musicians in Canada were based primarily in Toronto and Montreal, including Pat Thomas<\/strong> and the band Native Spirit, who rose from Toronto\u2019s Ghanaian community, and Lorraine Klaasen<\/strong>, who moved to Montreal from South Africa. This first wave of talent was quickly followed by such emerging artists as Toronto\u2019s Show-do-Man<\/strong> and Tarig Abubakar & the Afronubians, Montreal\u2019s Lilison Di Kinara<\/strong> and Vancouver\u2019s Alpha Yaya Diallo<\/strong>, who won Juno Awards for Best Global\/World Music Album in 1999, 2002 and again in 2005 as a member of the African Guitar Summit. The Guinean-born Diallo has just released his sixth album, Imm\u00e9<\/em>.<\/p>\n

African Guitar Summit was a kind of supergroup that also included Ottawa\u2019s Mighty Popo<\/strong> and such Toronto-based guitarists as Pa Joe, Adam Solomon, Donn\u00e9 Robert<\/strong> and Madagascar Slim<\/strong>, who had won two previous Junos for his album Omnisource <\/em>and as a member, with Bill Bourne<\/strong> and Lester Quitzau<\/strong>, of the fusion group Tricontinental. Slim plays a mix of blues and the music of his native Madagascar, something enhanced after a grant enabled him to travel back home to study the valiha, the Malagasy bamboo zither. Says Slim: \u201cI started out playing the blues, but Canadian audiences were open to hearing the music from my homeland so I\u2019ve moved in that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Slim\u2019s manager Derek Andrews, who was music programmer at Toronto\u2019s Harbourfront Centre from 1986 to 2003, where he booked a wealth of world music, African musicians in Canada have benefited greatly from their acceptance at music festivals of all kinds. \u201cCanadian jazz and folk festivals have long had an open door to African culture and that\u2019s really boosted the recognition of the music,\u201d says Andrews. He adds that the Junos, which have included a world-music category since 1992, also help. \u201cThere\u2019s a legitimacy that a Juno nomination or win provides \u2014 just like any other kind of industry recognition.\u201d<\/p>\n

The newest wave of African musicians in Canada, boosted by increased immigration, is the most enterprising and experimental yet. Montreal\u2019s H\u2019Sao, a family of three brothers and a sister from Chad that has performed at the city\u2019s jazz festival and released two CDs, has active MySpace and Facebook pages and a Twitter account and has produced several slick videos. The group\u2019s Caleb Rimtobaye<\/strong> also has a side project called Afrotronix, which stages events called Mystic Night, featuring dancers, musicians and acrobats from Cirque du Soleil.<\/p>\n

Toronto\u2019s Ruth Mathiang, an entrancing singer from Sudan, and Katenen \u2018Cheka\u2019 Dioubate<\/strong>, a mesmerizing griot performer from Guinea, are two of the fastest rising stars. Mathiang\u2019s CD Butterfly <\/em>combines a mixture of everything from hip-hop and gospel to reggae and Afrobeat, while Dioubate, who has called herself a \u201csnow griot\u201d since moving to Canada, will be releasing her much anticipated debut CD this summer. Other fresh new talents include Angolan-born Valu David<\/strong>, Eritrean Daniel Nebiat<\/strong> and South Africa\u2019s Kgomotso \u2018KG\u2019 Tsatsi<\/strong>, all of whom are based in Toronto.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, there is no shortage of African-inspired acts in Canada \u2014 or Canadian connections with African musicians. Montreal\u2019s Taaf\u00e9 Sanga, Ottawa\u2019s Souljazz Orchestra and Toronto\u2019s Mr. Something Something are all blending musical styles to create fresh new sounds. Then there\u2019s banjo player Jayme Stone<\/strong>\u2019s Africa to Appalachia <\/em>project with Montreal-based Malian kora player Mansa Sissoko<\/strong>, which won the 2009 Juno for World Music Album. Says Derek Andrews: \u201cFusion is a reality in the evolution of world music, and cross-cultural collaborations are a big part of the Canadian scene.\u201d From grassroots artists to superstars like K\u2019naan, African music is adding a vibrant new beat to the Canadian sound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

African music in Canada<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-non-categorise"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uat.socan.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}