The Point

Monday, June 23, 2008

Sauvage

All right, I'm about to get all NPR on you.

On Friday I was riding my bike home from work, and I almost literally ran into strawberry season. I was riding by the Peterborough Artspace, and I saw this sort of epic sculpture made out of plump, poised red berries, and I noticed a sign out front that implied, 'Come in - something is new and there might be a handful of fruit in it for you.' I immediately parked my bike to investigate.

I walked in and admired some of the acrylic paintings hanging of places I was familiar with, but with all of their English and French names erased. Instead, they were painted over with older names, a few of which seemed vaguely familiar (Tyendenaga, something that sounded like Ottawa) but most of which were totally foreign to me. But they were all around this place where I am living now. Someone came in to offer up the plates of strawberries for the taking if we were hungry. I took a paperplateful. I kept looking and sucked all that sour sweet red nectar off my fingers. Standing with a friend I'd run into staring at one of the paintings of two different maps of the Great Lakes region, my friend asked me what we were looking at. A woman came up beside us and said, 'Turtle Island.'

Within a few minutes I was surrounded by about 40 more people, and just when I thought I was going to collapse from the heat of all those bodies, the woman who'd announced the upforgrabsness of the fruit welcomed everybody into the space and told us she was proud to host this, artist Christi Belcourt's showing, as the kickoff for the weekend long Ode'min Giizis, or Strawberry Moon, festival. There was more prayers and songs in Anishnaabe and then Christi took us all upstairs to see a slideshow of her family and their story.

She was from Curve Lake, a First Nation not far from here, but her parents and her grandparents never taught her their language (which I gather was Ojibwe, but don't quote me on that). In this tepid but much needed debate that started about the legacy of residential schools in Canada after Harper apologised on behalf of the Canadian people this month, it was powerful for me to see and hear the loss in her voice and in the pictures she showed of this sudden break in the continuity of her family history. It reminded me of the breaks in my own family's continuity, severed nerves that should have linked me back to Hakka, to Danish, to Gaelic, to Dutch and lord knows what else. To feel that immediacy of sensing that something unknowable is lost and can never really be brought back.

She talked about her experience trying to relearn the names of places around North America, or Turtle Island, that they had before the Europeans arrived. About her art's attempts to reconcile her past and this deep well of collective memory she was trying to tap into that was cut off from her by centuries of settlers claiming ownership over 'true' naming rights on this land, claiming the right to say what the real names are of the rivers and moraines and forests they met. She showed us a film her husband made of her painting a work she called 'So much depends upon who holds the shovel.'

The night after that it rained, and it rained hard. Lately I seem to be just missing it as I bike home; as soon as I get inside my building, I can hear the thunder and feel the pressure change and the wind shift and suddenly it's a torrential downpour outside and I worry about rust. It was dark outside, pretty late at night and I was on my laptop when suddenly lightning cracked not far away (thank you, science lessons I learned from Poltergeist) and all the lights went out inside my apartment and outside on the street. I went to the window to watch the world for a little while surviving without the permanent orange twilight. By the time I'd thought to get dressed and get my keys, everything had flickered and rumbled back to electrical life.

Sunday night was the end of the strawberry festival, and it was kind of funny to see so many people's eyes light up getting directions to U-Pick strawberry fields and buying our little green plastic baskets fresh from Havelock or wherever and just savouring that juicy burst of flavour that just makes you stop and savour this moment, happening right now, not going anywhere at all but over your tongue. My friend Thalia and I were speculating as to why the seeds of a strawberry are all on the outside. She guessed that they're probably just too lazy to grow flesh over the whole thing.

Headlining the last concert of the festival was Cambridge Bay-born 'Edith Piaf-like' throat-singing goddess of the esophagus Tanya Tagaq. Tagaq played with Björk for quite some time touring for Vespertine and collaborating on a capella electronic opera Medúlla, which is about as much work for the untrained ear to enjoy as you might imagine but well worth the journey. It was my first time seeing her play live, and I was pretty pumped because my friend June interviewed her last summer for her radio show on CJSR when she played at the Edmonton Folk Fest, and she just sounded like the craziest, funniest woman, someone who did what she did well and wasn't afraid to do it boldly and still make fun of herself. (June, did you ever get to air it?)

Good lord was it wilder than I could have ever imagined. A few friends of mine went to, and when I told them I couldn't find a seat in the cramped little bar, they said it didn't matter, because we'd be up dancing before long anyway. Dancing? For a singer whose music was mostly grunts and groans and wails?

She came on stage and told us she was 'about to bleed.' Her words. She rubbed her belly. She said she loved being a woman. She's got this deceptively squeaky, adorable voice that she used to tell us how in love she was with her body and being who she was. At the time, of course, she was strutting around in a zip-up black top and the shortest hot pants you've ever seen, with a red hairband though her hair (which I guess was somewhat thematically appropriate with her new album out called Auk/Blood) and a polar bear claw bracelet. It looked like a dagger.

At that point, Tagaq let the cellist and the beatboxer introduce themselves 'sonically,' and she honestly looked so excited, it was like she'd never heard them play before. And then without any clear transition, they started riffing off one another, taking leads from one another, and before I knew it the whole room had swelled and she was on her knees and people were swaying back and forth and sure enough, there were women up dancing around and around. A baby was crying behind me, and I thought of the lightning and I thought of the joy of those strawberries and the sound of a voice and the incredible sexiness of this woman who really and completely owned her body and every sound it made. And I thought of this author David Gessner, who talks about how all of us can live with these wild moments in our lives every day, this wildnerness, that keeps us alive. The sound of grief. The squeal of birth. The pop of a seed sizziling in hot oil. A lover's touch.

Wild moments.


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posted by Christopher at 11:02 p.m. | link | 2 comments

Monday, May 12, 2008

Podcast #2

Where on earth has he been, the masses cry. Calm down, my adoring fans. Your letters have filled my new mailbox (I moved across the street last week) to bursting, and I simply haven't the time to write back individually. I

've been working on episode 2 of the podcast, you see. It's quite a cracker. This episode features a riveting discussion about Paulo Freire and mixed martial arts. What's that I hear in the distance? Ah yes. The sound of riveting. Ness.

In case you can't get enough of the music (and who could?), here's the track listing for your listening convenience:
00:28 La Ritournelle (Mr Dan's Magic Wand Mix) - Sebastien Tellier
03:47 World Town - M.I.A.
33:07 Possibly Maybe - Final Fantasy & Ed Droste (download this whole album for free at Stereogum here)
51:47 Making of a Cyborg - Kenji Kawai
56:19 The Shore - Basia Bulat

You can download it here, subscribe on iTunes now (yay! just search for The Subject Tonight) or listen to it steaming below. Questions and grave concerns are, as always, more than welcome. Kudos to last year's contest winner and all around lovely young woman Jenanne for the Basia Bulat track, taken from a CBC Radio 3 concert. I was searching for that song for a long long time.


Photo credit: Shiratski (published under a Creative Commons licence)

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posted by Christopher at 4:04 a.m. | link | 2 comments

Saturday, April 12, 2008

The only thing constant is change

I guess all of us who tune into CBC have something to gripe about these days. For some it's that the delicate (but definitely gelling) Muslim Canadiana lite humour of Little Mosque on the Prairie is getting picked up again. For me, it's the untimely demise of the uncomfortably funny jPod, which really did meet a premature end. If you haven't watched it, the episodes are free to watch in Canada over here, and if you have and you've squirmed and laughed as much as I have, a lovely bunch of folks have a whole host of ideas on how to save it here.

For a surprisingly vocal number, the most outrageous thing CBC is doing right now is shaking up Radio 2. For those of you who've never been forced to listen to this insufferable station before, Radio 2 is the all-music arm of English-language CBC's conventional radio service. It's unlistenable. For eons, further back than even Bill Richardson can be bothered to remember with an another mind-numbingly boring anecdote, it's been almost all classical. All the time. All. Year. Long.

Now they're announcing plans to shove the slightest wedge in the door to allow - gasp - other genres on the air, and people are up in arms. Ah yes, and they're disbanding the CBC Radio Orchestra in favour of taking the show on the road, as it were, and recording with different orchestras all over the country. 'They're dumbing it down,' the TSO season ticket-holders cry.

It's embarrassing to watch. Our oft-maligned public broadcaster gets enough flak for being an inaccessible, esoteric leftist black hole of tax dollars as it is (only partly true). It responds in a timid but thoughtful way first with the warm welcoming indie rock bosom of Radio 3 by podcast and satellite radio. Then it raises one little finger to suggest it might be time to stop listening to Rachmaninoff from sunrise to sunset. And now we get to watch the shameful scramble among the gateholders of the most elitist part of the CBC to keep the savages out.

John Teraud wrote what I think is a very reasonable reply a few weeks back. He noted:

Toronto-based Canadian Music Centre executive director Elisabeth Bihl was one of the louder voices of alarm yesterday, citing the important role Radio 2 and the CBC orchestra played in helping foster new music in the country.

Asked how many new compositions were commissioned by the CBC orchestra in recent years, Bihl initially had no idea but, in a later call, gave last year’s number as 18.

It’s like that with the rest of us. Shocked by news of losing yet another oasis of familiarity in our daily lives, we forget to think about the precise value this institution may have, other than making us forget the inexorable passage of time.

I’m willing to bet it’s not what is being changed that scares us most. It is change itself – in any form.

The function of a national broadcaster is changing, he says.

The whole notion of a national broadcaster, linking people otherwise isolated from a national culture, needs to be more flexible in the Internet age. After all, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio and the BBC are only a few mouse clicks away.

In the same way, the CBC is now a portal to Canadian culture for the rest of the world, not just ourselves.

Wouldn’t it be nice if our portal truly reflected the country – so our rich and ever-regenerating indie pop and rock artists and burgeoning world and world-fusion musicians can get equal airtime (and bandwidth) with the venerable Toronto and Montreal symphony orchestras?

That’s where Radio 2 is going – while still guaranteeing listeners several hours of classical programming every day. We should be proud – not angry – that the CBC is willing to take this kind of risk.

The only thing constant is change. It's time to let the barbarians in. That being said, you should go help save jPod from its premature demise. Because what did change ever do for you, anyway?

A tip of that hat to Michael Vincent at Fully Composed for the interview except.

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posted by Christopher at 1:05 a.m. | link | 0 comments

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Podcast #1


Alright guys, here it is. The first episode of The Point's podcast, The Subject Tonight, at this lovely url for your listening pleasure.

This episode is essentially a conversation between myself and my friend and housemate Meaghan about a book very near and dear to my heart, One Hundred Years of Solitude. She had a lot of interesting things to say about it, and I hope you enjoy listening to what we tried to draw out. Given that some people had asked to make this thing to be downloadable outside of iTunes, I've put it in an mp3 file for your listening pleasure (and it is also subscribeable via Apple's delicious devil machinery the iTunes subscription hasn't been working yet, sorry).

The music for this edition:
00:00 Make You Feel That Way - Blackalicious
03:26 I Feel It All - Feist
25:53 Gimme Some Lovin' - Spencer Davis Group
43:09 Come March - Takagi Masakatsu
46:21 House Music - Cadence Weapon

Let me know what you think. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated, as always! And by the way, it can hardly be coincidence that this week marked the release of the audio reproduction of the first ever recorded sound.

PS The musician Meaghan and I keep talking about near the end is Eugene Hutz, and the song she samples is called Kids, by MGMT.



Photo credit: cinocino (published under a Creative Commons license)

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posted by Christopher at 4:54 a.m. | link | 4 comments

Friday, October 26, 2007

That Thing


Hee hee. I saw a magician last week.

If you`ve never had a chance to sit and be enchanted by Final Fantasy, I`d say it`s time you begun. Owen Pallett`s Polaris Prize-winning one-man act can only be described as pure and simple wizardry. The man is capable of spinning the most elaborate, heartbreaking, absurd, funny music out of thin air, right before your very eyes. He stands there with a violin, some equipment to loop his playing and his voice, and a piano. Behind him, his friend Steph makes wondrous pictures dance on a screen projector, of all things. And it works.

But the magic is that it`s all happening right in front of you. You can see all the elements before they`re struck. A bow, some strings. A microphone. And somehow he pulls out his golden needles and weaves it so densely, so delicately, you don`t even realise it before you`re wrapped up in a dirty little technicolour quilt. Oh yes, these are songs about massive genitals. And mistakes. And death by burning, and hope.

I thought about that evening a lot this weekend with the whole J K Rowling kerfluffle about announcing she`d always conceived of Dumbledore as a gay character. I read it, and I do not say a word of a lie, I just said `bullshit` for the next sixty seconds, over and over and over. And then I said it again. Did you say this? Tell me you said this.

It made me cringe to hear Wayson Choy gush in the Globe and Mail about how brave it was for her to 'out' him, about how wonderfully encouraging it would be for every child who ever picked up the books to see the world really is made of a wonderful rainbow of many colours. Bullshit. I read the seventh book. I got my hands on it in Yunnan, and in a city that probably has fewer English speakers than that book has pages. I read it cover to cover in a day, doing my best to shut out noisy intrusions like corn porridge, lychee vendors, and ancient Buddhist temples. There is not a whiff of homosexuality in Dumbledore's story there, fan fiction be damned. Of course fan fiction predicted this. It's a question of infinite, horny monkeys.

Rowling's coy, somewhat self-congratulating announcement of this little tidbit, months after the release of the last book, is completely disingenuous. If she really wanted to show kids that it doesn't matter if you're hetero, homo, poly, bi or house elf to be a great person, she should have put it in the bloody book. Subtext is great for a novel about disappointment, and growing up in Winnipeg and settling for an acceptable husband. Dim, obscure references to a young wizard's possible almost unspoken love do not, however, fall into the category of empowering literature for young readers. If the bloody thing was so important to understanding him, why not put it in the books? If it was better left out and interpreted on our own, then don't announce it three months later at Carnegie Hall. Honestly.

I'm reminded of Final Fantasy when I think of all this because of how casually and comfortably Owen Pallett talks about his own sexuality in his music. A love for boys doesn't automatically mean he has to wear purple disco pants and put pink flags all over everything. Sometimes it's okay just to talk about how all boys you've loved have been digital.

Real bravery this month? Alvaro Orozco. Dedicated The Point reader centavo mentioned him in an earlier post about a woman in a similar situation, Pegah Emambakhsh. Like Embakhsh, Orozco is facing deportation back to a country where he will face certain discrimination, fear, and the threat of violence for his sexuality. Unlike Emambakhsh, the country rejecting his application for refugee status isn't the UK government, it's our own.

The Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board has refused to grant him asylum on the grounds that it cannot be proved he will face discrimination if he is deported to his home country of Nicaragua, because... wait for it... they don't believe he's provided sufficient evidence that he's gay. Among their top beefs? A mysterious lack of sexual promiscuity whilst fleeing across the continent to seek asylum in Canada. Jesus. If you've got to have sex to define your sexuality now, where will that leave our dear Dumbledore?

He's not the only one recently rejected by the Immigration and Refugee Board, as gay rag Xtra reports surprisingly authoritatively here. I think the whole nature/nurture issue of being gay is a moot point. You don't have to be born a Christian to have the inherent human right to freedom from religious persecution. And you don't have to stick your tongue in every orifice that presents itself to have the right to freedom from persecution on the basis of your sexuality.

Typically, I'm going to link you to a petition to allow Orozco to stay in Canada. His deferred deportation date was supposed to be October 4th, but like Emambakhsh, he's currently in immigration limbo. Help him out, friends.

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posted by Christopher at 4:05 a.m. | link | 1 comments

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Sappy pappy

You should probably know that one of my greatest pleasures in life is listening to Mando-pop superstar Wang Leehom (AKA Leehom, AKA 王力宏, etc etc). In fact, as you're reading this, it would not be unreasonable to imagine me writing this post and shimmying in small movements back and forth to the infectious wonder that is Xin Zhong De Ri Yue, his second-last album. Yes, that was me you recognised in line with 20 000 weeping Chinese girls when it came out, waiting hours and hours to get him to sign my copy at So Show shopping centre.

But like all good Chinese pop stars, Leehom doesn't just make music. No, he also makes movies (one of which, coming out soon, looks like it might actually be worth watching). And does ads for things. A lot of things. For anything bloody company that will flash him a wad of cash and a bit of leg, to be honest.

I've known this as long as I've been listening to him (not decades). I've even got an mp3 of the awful piece of corporate shite he did for McDonald's, Wo Jiu Xihuan. But it still broke my heart when I saw him grinning back at me for the first time a few months ago from Wahaha bottled water. Bottled water? Really? From a man who talks up environmental responsibility and just released his first "green album"?

But then again, the situation around bottled water here in North America isn't the same as over in China. Here, unless you have been totally misled about the quality of what's coming out of your tap, you know that you more than likely have access to some of the cleanest, safest water in the world, and for less than pennies per liter. From a tap! In your house! We drink bottled water because it's more convenient than planning ahead to bring some when we go out, because pretty much every alternative at the vending machine is bad for you, and because... well, because it's everywhere.

In China, people usually drink it because they're going to get sick if they drink the tap water without boiling it, because it still has that sheen of luxury to it, and because the other popular alternative for middle class urban families is getting it by the jug for your cooler, which isn't quite as toteable or stylish. But despite Wang Leehom's undeniable marketing appeal, it's still absurdly unaffordable for many millions more than all us Canucks up here gurgling cheerfully.

We have a lot to be thankful for.

This hit me watching Michael Moore's new documentary Sicko with my friend Angela the other day. I honestly did not realise how fortunate we are to have universal health care in Canada. There are a nightmarish litany of agonising choices we will never have to make, crippling debts we will never have to find ourselves in when we get sick, because we have decided, collectively, that it's up to all of us to take care of each other when we do. And I am so grateful for it. (Look! Maybe the Globe and Mail just watched Sicko the other day too. I am imagining a big pajama party. Dozens of journalists in Winnie the Pooh fleece bottoms, with twizzlers, notepads, and Orville Reddenbacher. I am imagining Rex Murphy not amused).

We're racist, ignorant, selfish, and short-sighted in many ways. We have a lot of history to come to terms with, and a lot of problems to overcome ahead of us. But on the whole, I think I'm having a Margaret Wente moment; a genuine appreciation for what battles have been brought to bring us where we are today, to a place where, for the most part, we take care of each other and we get along. I am constantly learning how truly remarkable those things are.

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posted by Christopher at 4:45 p.m. | link | 0 comments

Friday, February 09, 2007

Sun Again

When we finally burst forward... maybe we'll sing it out like Kinnie.

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posted by Christopher at 2:59 a.m. | link | 0 comments

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Not a sin

Call me a nerd (no really, do it, it feels good), but I am a sucker for self-confident, sexy singers who know exactly who they are and where they come from. Which is why I'm wondering, how did I not know until Friday how amazing Kinnie Starr was? (That would be her at right)

I went down to see the International Week wrap-up concert, The Power of Silence they called it, and it was really incredible. Not just in a "we're a multicultural quilt of love" way, which I totally dig, but genuinely amazing music and dance. Firefly never ceases to entrance me.

And of course, the kicker was Kinnie Starr, born and bred in Cowtown no less, who completely won me over. She's smouldering, hilarious, insightful, gentle, and is 100% confident in her own skin. With the possible exception of Tagaq, I don't know of any other aboriginal singer in Canada with such a powerful sense of themself and of getting others up to that microphone of life with her. At one point she literally offered the mic to anyone in the crowd who wanted it, and no one moved. She said,

"Hello! Human beings!"

and someone ran up to sing.

I missed the girl from Vic singing the national anthem in Cree at the Flames/Canucks game on Saturday (admittedly, one of the only times I've turned on Hockey Night in Canada this year), but did anyone else read this article in the Journal today about Derek Powder? (apologies, it's only available online for subscribers.) An excerpt:
Derek Powder joined a gang because he was tired of being ridiculed and bullied at school.
Physically and sexually abused as a child in a family where drugs and violence were the norm, he didn't fit in at school and was only able to express his anger through violence.
He became a drug dealer and an addict, and an alcoholic, and spent time in jail - until four years ago, when he decided to change his life.
Now 25, Powder works with Native Counselling Services of Alberta, is a single parent raising a six-year old daughter, and spends a lot of time trying to persuade young people not to follow the path he took.
His message is that even if you grow up in a dysfunctional family, you still have control of your life.
"Maybe if there had been somebody out there for me I wouldn't have taken that path," Powder told a forum on youth and gang violence Sunday.
"But I have moved forward and I'm not a victim anymore.
"There's more to life than drugs, parties and alcohol, and my daughter won't see that stuff."
The forum at the west-end Boys and Girls Club was a first step in getting more youth involved in addressing the issue of violence, said Kyle Dube, Western Canada program manager for YOUCAN, which organized the event.
"We want to engage youth and give them a voice. We don't want to be a bunch of adults talking to youth; we want to empower them to deal with the issues themselves."
Now that's real democracy. In fact, all of this talk about sustainability is bullshit unless there are more of us like Derek Powder and Kinnie Starr going out and handing that mic over. Aboriginal, Somali, Desi, Belorussian... it all comes down to speaking up.

Alright, alright, I'll go back to writing about books! But wait, don't you guys want a free book?! Send me your picture already! I know you have one lurking around your hard-drive waiting to be shared with the world... or me... so do it! You have until Sunday.

Photo credit: David Wiewel

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posted by Christopher at 12:45 a.m. | link | 0 comments

Friday, January 26, 2007

The sweet and the bitters

Someone on YouTube has written that Patrick Wolf is a 'unique guy who wears both a belt and suspenders,' and another has described him as 'a ginger bloke sitting at a piano.' He also plays the theramin and the harpsicord. I like to think of him (along with Owen Pallett) as one of the leaders of a brilliant new genre: Wastrel. And so for you I present the video for his newest single, 'Bluebells,' from imminent drop The Magic Position.

As sweet as Patrick Wolf's voice is though, there is trouble in the henhouse. Thomas, who helps run the Padmanadi estaurant down on 97th Street and is one of the kindest, sweetest people in Edmonton, is about to be deported. The story is longer and more sordid than you'd expect for someone who always makes sure to ask how you are when he comes to each and every table to pour the chrysanthemum tea. Read Ross Moroz's article about it in Vue here.

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posted by Christopher at 2:14 a.m. | link | 0 comments

Friday, December 29, 2006

What to watch: 2007

Björk in snow (bjork.com/Erez Sabag)

Three things to watch in 2007:

Björk's new album - I am waiting with great anticipation for her new record. Her last stand-alone album, Medúlla, successfully caught everyone listening by surprise, to say the least. I appreciate that she doesn't sing for the sake of reaching as many people as possible. Some people want to listen to her experimenting with making beats out of cards shuffling and throat singing; others do not. For those of us that do, so much the better, because she's a brilliant (if bizarre) artist through and through. Now she's apparently working on a hip-hop album of all things. How can you say no to this woman? She's insatiable. The best part? She's reportedly producing it with Timbaland. Yes yes yes.

Darfur and Jan Eliasson - The genocide that wouldn't go away. Kofi Annan just appointed Jan Eliasson, former President of the United Nations General assembly and former Swedish foreign minister, as the Secretary-General's Special Envoy in Darfur. It's way past the point of humanitarian collapse. Aid agencies are pulling out after facing '"unprecedented difficulties" because of military activity and direct violence against them.' Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has conditionally accepted a joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force in the region, but has intimated the government may allow little more than logistical support from the UN troops, and only a few hundred of them at that (as opposed to at least 22 000 troops in the joint force that many many corners are saying are urgently needed).

It is an understatement to say that there is something of a conflict of interest here. Why on earth al-Bashir's government, who have been accused of complicity in the genocide themselves, should have the final say in whether UN forces are allowed into the region to bring an end to the slaughter... is simply beyond me. It's absurd. Let's see how closely Ban Ki-moon listens to Eliasson in the new year and whether the international community has the balls to finally act.

Huangbaiyu - On this little village rest the hopes of a nation. Sort of. Despite what the Kyoto Accord might imply, there can be no discussion of creating sustainable societies today without China and India, and the former is taking an ambitious step in a tiny community in Liaoning called Huangbaiyu. William McDonough is the co-author of Cradle-to-Cradle, a book about truly circular ways of living in a very nutritious way which you can expect to hear a lot more about here and which you should pick up now. He's also part of the China-US Centre for Sustainable Development, which recenty launched a project in Huangbaiyu to create more sustainable homes for the residents, taking into account the cradle-to-cradle concept of making things that are locally appropriate, use energy intelligently, and give net benefits to the environment they are part of. The problem? It seems no one asked the residents about the project.

Locals are complaining that the new homes have yards that are way too small to support the small home-based agriculture they depend on to supplement their income, and are far too expensive. So far, not a single one of the 42 homes built in the first phase of the project has any takers. Part of the problem is likely that the 'local partner' in the project, Dai Xiaolong, is the village's leader as well as a chief investor. An experienced businessman, he should be commended for pursuing environmental sustainability for his community for more than just altruistic reasons - after all, no company is going to invest in something for the benefit of society as a whole if it's not going to make them a profit. It seems the project has taken a series of bizarre turns, though. Only one house is solar-powered as planned, the building materials being used aren't at all what was originally envisaged, the houses are apparently being built with garages...

It reminds me, actually, of the lack of consideration of the needs of the actual residents that seems to be threatening the veneer of 'sustainability' over Edmonton's Downtown East plan. It will be well worth watching what happens in Huangbaiyu next year, because the number of fingers in this particular pie means what happens in Liaoning will likely help set the tone for other sustainable development projects in the Middle Kingdom.

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posted by Christopher at 2:05 p.m. | link | 0 comments

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Pop

M.I.A., Sri Lankan-born UK hip hop artist

Lately I've been really into two things that have more in common than I thought. One of them apparently originates in Brazil, but it seems like an idea with a somewhat universal ring to it. The other has confirmed, for most of my friends, that I am indeed as crazy as I look, but hear me out. I have a hypothesis that hip hop and theatre of the oppressed are different leaves of a self-same tree.

Now, if you know me, you can testify that I probably seem like an unlikely fan of hip hop. I'm still sort of shaky on whether I can use that word interchangeably with rap, but I'm not exactly into Fifty Cent or Nelly, and I wouldn't even know where to buy a Fubu jacket. It wasn't until this summer, though, that I found out rap could be about more than bitches and bling and riding around in your new Benz.

I don't remember how I started listening to K'naan but as soon as Soobax fell into my ear, I heard sweet honey (okay, I'm thinking of this Persian snack, baunieh) and even though I couldn't understand any of the words in Somali, I felt like he understood me. Something about the music made me want to stand up and shout, and I couldn't believe someone was rapping about warlords and refugees. I had the immense honour of meeting him and some of the guys in his band this summer, and I was completely humbled by how quiet and dignified he was. He was singing about seeing his best friend shot in Mogadishu, about suffering and about telling children they're worth something, and yet he had the presence of the most reserved philosopher. I still can't believe it.

So I started wondering if there was more to this hip hop thing, if other people were singing about empowerment and about struggle, instead of just how sweet their new ride was. How could I have known M.I.A. and Cadence Weapon were way ahead of me?

And then I heard a line in one of K'Naan's songs that hit me: hearing rap from the US when he was seven, it made him feel eleven -- 'I understood it,' he says, 'as the poor people's weapon.' And like a glass of water settling down, it all became clear to me, why his music hit me so hard. It made me see hip hop as not just some ivory tower reserved for the beautiful, the educated, the classically trained or the gangstas with more ice than Reykjavik, but as something anyone could pick up as long as they told their story and told it well.

Which brings me all the way around to this Theatre of the Oppressed thing.

A couple of years ago in Beijing, I met Darren, the program supervisor from the other Canada World Youth group in the city and told him about my disparate, seemingly irreconcilable interests. I'd been doing theatre since I was a little kid, and I'd tried acting, directing, design, tech, everything I could get my hands on. At a certain point, though, I had to stop, because I realised I had stopped being passionate about theatre itself, and started craving only the applause. I felt hollow about it, but there was some magic to the act of performance I wanted to get back into. Someday. I told him I felt torn because that thirst was so far away from my other passion, which falls today somewhat loosely under the name international development. How could I reconcile a need to understand the world in the context of other cultures and languages, understand poverty, and still do the stand up on stage and sing thing? Can you see where this is going?

He told me to check out the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and his ideas about education as a tool for empowerment, rather than as a vehicle for filling empty vessels from some esoteric font of wisdom. He said Freire's ideas about popular education tied right back into theatre through something called Theatre of the Oppressed, and then he started talking about conflict resolution and helping kids work through crises through theatre and I remember my brain shutting down and thinking This is so depressing. Why on earth does he think I would want to be part of something about oppression?

Fast forward to about two months ago. My friend Gus called me up and asked me if I wanted to do a cool education thing about globalisation with a Canada World Youth group in Camrose. I'd never been to Camrose (which is shameful, since it takes longer to drive to West Ed from my house) and I think you get a sense now for how much I love CWY, so I said yes in a heart beat and came to the brainstorming session at Remedy with pencil and paper and eager eyes. Well, lo and behold, his idea for this globalisation thing turned out to be a form of popular theatre, better known as... theatre of the oppressed.

As our group started talking about it, I realised what the label meant. We decided to do two skits; one about access to HIV/Aids drugs, and the other about cross-cultural marriages. Rather than doing a conventional sort of morality skit with a wag of the finger, though, we came up with some seemingly insoluble situations for the characters, and let the 'audience' work them out. In the Aids scene, I played a CEO of a pharmaceutical company trying to explain why I couldn't sell our anti-retrovirals for less in poorer countries without losing my job. One of the other characters was a little girl who had no friends at school because they were afraid they would catch her 'bugs.' Tough. So what did they do?

The audience got to ask us all questions in character after the scene. Why are you so heartless? would be a good summary of what came my way. Why couldn't you take a tiny hit in profits in order to save people's lives? And as we broke into smaller groups with a handful of audience members to talk about why our characters made the decisions they did, I realised why this type of theatre ties back to popular education. Rather than pretending we knew everything about the issues involved (which we didn't), the audience members got a chance to throw in their experience and knowledge about HIV and its impact, and threw open doors we hadn't realised existed. Some of the participants who came were from South Africa and Mozambique, so when the girl playing an Aids orphanage relief worker talked about how hard it was for her to watch the kids suffer needlessly because the ARVs were too expensive, there were people in the room who understood exactly what she meant, and weren't afraid to say so. We started having a roomfull of people discussing why a corporation's bottom line comes before a human life, and they started coming up with solutions none of us performing had even considered. It was pretty incredible.

And I last week I realised why this type of theatre works, and what it's capable of. Augusto Boal, the originator of the concept, talked about popular theatre as a tool for confronting the parts of our lives that oppress us, and those that empower us. By using the convention of performance as a tool for discussion of very real issues that shape the way we live, you quite literally begin a 'rehearsal for revolution.' And you don't have to have to go to Julliard to do it. Popular theatre works when everybody in the room is simply there to tell their story and to tell it well.

So finally understanding the way this kind of theatre can be a platform for people who may not have a voice, I started connecting dots with hip hop and thinking again about rap being 'the poor people's weapon.' What they have in common is their ability to let anyone, of any standing or colour, from any country, in any language, speak up and be heard. But I wonder now, who am I, mostly white, able to afford a university education, living in a middle class family in Canada, fluent in English, to tell other people how they can become empowered, to identify with the hardships of my brothers and sisters struggling to feed their families, to fight Hollywood imperialism, to live through civil war? I wonder as I wander.

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