Bumping into... Debashis Sinha

Bumping Into... is a series of mini-chats with a variety of peeps that you might run into in some of our local music communities. (There's a bit of an intro and my thoughts behind the series here.)

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How are you? Where are you?

I'm doing ok. At home in Toronto but currently teaching (in person!) at National Theatre School in Montreal.

What have you been up to since March or so?

Making lots of new music (coming out next year on Establishment), doing research on machine learning and AI and sound (and the adjacent issues around justice, oppressive tech, etc headed by the amazing scientists and activists at radicalai.net), getting more involved in teaching, doing lots of homework with my kid and cooking a lot.

Have you found any new ways to do old things? How are you feeling about the shifts in how music is being made/shared/listened to?

I feel like we're coming to a new equilibrium after the initial pressure to play live online. I've done a livestream but this was more recently and with a lot of infrastructure - for some reason I resisted the urgency at the beginning of this all - partly because I was overwhelmed and partly because I was privileged enough to remain relatively secure financially. As for now, I work a lot in theatre and many companies are moving towards making audio dramas, which is super fun as it is a genre that I love listening to and making (here's one, written by Andre Alexis and produced by Volcano Theatre). I'm grateful that my practice has intersected with many different performance and exhibition contexts as the technical and storytelling knowledge I've gained in various places and through various work is all coalescing as the ways of making and sharing music and sound shift and change. I'm learning a lot.

Any works of art that have been a light for you in these times? Anything that's just been a good diversion?

Cooking! And I've been reading a lot. "Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous Sound Studies" by Dylan Robinson has been blowing my mind. He writes about Indigenous systems of knowledge and their difficult relationship with the genre of western art music - but it's much more than that. When I think of some of the more culturally specific work I'm interested in making, his writing has been a great template to organize my thoughts.

How are you feeling about 2021?

Um. Well. I'm not sure. I have a failure of imagination. I just want everyone to be safe, and for everyone to do the things that keep everyone safe, especially those hit disproportionately by this virus. I do know I'm going to keep wearing masks all through 2021 and probably longer.

Anything else we'd chat about if we bumped into each other?

I'd want to say you're looking great! And I miss you and we all miss you and the beautiful work you do in the city to make music and all of us feel welcome.