Mighty Mighty Popo
One of the very first people to play Voyageur in public was Popo Murigande. He was on the stage in Major's Hill Park for the afternoon show in Ottawa on Canada Day 2006, the day of the guitar's debut. I handed it to Colin Linden first (since I knew Colin from Ranchdale Public School!) but Popo might have been the next to play it after Colin. This was all before the official evening unveiling with Stephen Fearing on the main Parliament Hill stage later that day.
Suffice to say that Popo's relationship to this guitar goes back to the beginning and he's one of those artists who has played the guitar on a number of occasions over the years: at the Vancouver Folk Festival, once before in Toronto and at his last CD launch at Barrymore's in Ottawa. Tonight, he returned to the Lula Lounge in Toronto to launch his new album "Gakondo" and I'm thrilled that he asked me to be there with Voyageur.
This album is the culmination of some recent trips back to his birthplace of Rwanda to study and reconnect with the roots of his music and, not surprisingly, "Gakondo" is much more acoustically oriented album. That was reflected on the stage tonight with 3 acoustic guitars, dobro, mandolin, 4 background vocalists and the always astonishing Kofi Ackah on percussion. For the most part, Popo played an acoustic gourd-body guitar swapping it out a couple of times for a hollow-body electric and once for Voyageur for the sole instrumental tune of the evening, "Ibra". It was a gorgeous, lilting performance and a real honour to hear the guitar in his hands again.
Thanks to Popo Murigande, Nadine McNulty, Otimoi Oyemu and the Batuki Music Society and - as always - sound man Howard Laurie and the amazing staff and management at Lula Lounge.
Posted at 1:06 AM
TED's Kingston Offspring
You may recall a post last year from the TEDx Conference in Ottawa. TEDx-s are independently organized talks built on the main TED template. Yesterday's TEDx was organized by Queen's University alumnus Andrew Phillips in the theatre at the Theological Hall.
We had been at CAPACOA in Ottawa until late on Saturday night and had friends to see in O-Town before heading to Kingston. Plus we had to put photographer Doug Nicholson on the 2:35 train to Toronto once we got to Kingston so we missed the first half of the TED program. Still, it looks like it was a really great first half as the discussions in the lobby during the break were really animated. They had a good turnout and the speakers generated lots of debate - which is precisely what TED is supposed to do.
I was on last in the program and missed Mike McHugh's talk before me but I did manage to hear inspiring presentations from Peter MacLeod of MASS LBP and Zahra Ebrahim from archiTEXT.
The sub-theme of the day was "Superheroes" and for my talk, I focussed a little bit on the Clark Kents reflected in the story of the guitar who help make it such a superhero-like instrument. The presentation went really well. In stark contrast to Saturday's event at CAPACOA, the audience was absolutely rapt and I got two slightly embarrassing standing ovations for the full-length version of the presentation. A further ovation was forthcoming for Andy Delisi who brought Voyageur to life with a medley of songs to round out the evening. All kinds of people came up in the lobby afterwards to talk, take pictures with the guitar and get books signed.
My only regret is that I had forgotten to include the picture above in my presentation. It was taken during our portrait sessions at the Alianait Festival in Iqaluit. PolarMan (pictured) is the only Canadian included in the World Superhero Registry. His chief superpower seems to be snow shovelling.
Thanks to Andrew Phillips and the staff, volunteers and audience for this first TEDx at Queen's University in Kingston. Thanks also to Four Points Sheraton, Kingston.
Posted at 10:09 AM
CAPACOA
CAPACOA is the bilingual acronym for the association of Canadian arts presenters - the people who devise and host a variety of live performances in music, dance, theatre and more. Not surprisingly, these are difficult times for these folks - with shrinking government support, higher costs and sponsors with their own economic difficulties.
Erin Benjamin is the new Executive Director of this organization and for this 23rd annual gathering of the tribe thought it might be a good time to make this a forum for thinking about new ways of working together, subtitling the conference Culture of Collaboration. To emphasize the importance of this heuristic, she invited Six String Nation to be part of the conference as an example of a project that had reached across disciplines, cultures and regions to create something that could connect with a wide audience in a multitude of ways as part of its very essence.
We were set up to do portraits on Saturday just outside the main conference room during the day and I was invited to give a short presentation during the early evening program. I confess I was disappointed with the response to the presentation - where many it seemed were more focussed on networking with their colleagues - and very disappointed with book sales (I sold just one book - to an excited Jacquie Drew, I should add). But, as usual, those who came to get their portraits taken had a great experience and we met all kinds of wonderful and curious folks. I'm only sorry that some of the people whom I would love to have had invite us to their events either didn't come to meet us or didn't hear the presentation.
Thanks to Erin Benjamin, Tara Lapointe and the rest of the CAPACOA staff, volunteers Ilan Yampolsky, Sheilagh D'Arcy McGee and Bar Morgan and the staff of the Ottawa Westin Hotel.
Posted at 8:28 AM