A story of contacts with dub culture
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> > > > My father came home one day to discover me loudly recording a guitar track in my upstairs room of his prairie house by the railroad tracks. I was trying out something I'd learned from Glenn Branca by way of Sonic Youth, playing my strings in double unisons to a breakbeat I'd vocalised myself earlier, all this driven through my girlfriend's father's old stereo amp and onto the wide tape of an old reel to reel out of which the voice of my dead great uncle Abe served as the scratched sample for this most peculiar and quite totally lost production of mine.
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> > I'd have to say that stumbling upon Glenn Gould's polyphonic radio plays and my time working with Dimitri Brunelle-Derome on his Garlic project were critical contacts with european angles on tasteful and textured dub productions. I called my experiments in my mid-twenties schizophonics and spirals, before I folded in on myself and began collaging with composition, seeking the spirals in hypnotic, pulsing partials. Their method seemed to involve a lot of late night brooding and inspired madness. At any rate, I began smoking as soon as my apprenticeship started.
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> > > > > > A dub poet is sleeping on my couch, in a basement of the gorge view apartments, just past the inner harbour of victoria BC, dreaming of things that may happen at our show tonight. This will be the day that she first buys menthols, the only live performance by a band called garlic flavour, a singular gathering of the island's curious and unoccupied. The poet in question is klyde broox, and he is crashing at mine because of mcgilligan books, my granny's name, uncle's impetus, Aunt's job, a generation and sustenance of memories, stacks of books in boxes, a family gathering at McNally Robinson, the circuit of book releases, cafés, and open mics that brings klyde to Victoria, my losenge of solace on the western edge of turtle island, my three year's playpen. His Facebook presence is a treasure. The deftness of his lyricism, and the incise ostinato of his social conscience, hallmarks all of the dubs presence in Toronto throughout my lifetime.
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> > > > > >memories of Lillian allen and the dub poets collective begin with being invited over for dinner an hour early, because my family is often quite late. I remember being surrounded by stylish, eloquent, laid-back blackness, an unfamiliar comfort, an urban delight. Maybe it was Clifton I heard there, reciting a piece pared into my own story now, jump high gazelle imagery and presence, The page on the stage, political rage on page, poetry as a means to an ends.
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> > > > > I remember the house on Lauder out of which McGilligan books was run, with a basement full of books, stories of the underrepresented, of the Arab spring, of dub poetry, mommy-daddy, monday. A basement that held part of Lillian's archives: tapes, dats, and compacts discs spanning three decades of recording sessions, when she moved out of her home nearby, above the spring mount Creek that flows down bull to the Garrison. I remember Allen's Juno award winning albums: revolution tea party and conditions critical. They were part of my early afrocentric musical education, along with Gil Scott heron, and public enemy's Fear of a black planet. I had ambitions of making drum and bass versions of one track, but never made it past the demo stage.
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> > > > > > > I remember performing rub a dub style with Allen and the parachute club in 2008 at the luminato stage on the street outside of ocad. The drummer was Billy Bryans, who had produced Allen's two heavyweight eighties albums. I got to rap a verse on that song, even though I'm sure I missed every rehearsal. And in consulting video footage available on YouTube, it seems I also recited an italian rhyme amidst the performance of Rise Up. What a ham. I made it to soundcheck tho, chilled with Mischa and my vintage 80s vogues and chatelaine collection, culled from roadside recycling. The best things in life are always eventually free. "oh, look at this porn" he purred. After my turn on the mic, I pogo'd and danced backup to Lillians tune The Subversives, played tambourine and danced through the crowd in the street in a lime green dress shirt that Tia Brazda gave me. Exciting times.
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> > > > > > > After that I got to host a poetry night at Ellington's raggae café and record shop (rip) on st Clair for Allen's ocad writing class, goofed around with d'bi anitafrika. You see, I know now how lucky and how privileged I've been to
> > > > > > >spin round this circle
> > > > > > > For she is the canadian queen of dub, laying out politics in poetics, putting pages on the stage since back when queen west was rough warehouses and punk venues.
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> > > > > > > In 2013 I was asked to join the online promo team for Allen's last release, Anxiety, and seized upon the opportunity to gain permission to remix her work, blending classic dub, mash K-pop and jazz piano, and spin my own beats and collage production styles in loose spirals around her accapellas. A collaboration fifteen years in the making.
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> > > > > > > Which brings us to today. Ann and Lil both moved out of the old hood where I first put foot to Toronto's Terra firma. They're international now, doing conferences and making speeches. Mcgilligan books is a memory, little Rose is grown and performing music of her own. And Lillians work is being recognized as part of the Tributes an tributaries exhibition at the AGO this month. She's curated four weeks of spoken word, and she'll be performing on October 28th. You got to be there.
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