Monday Roundup #233

Concert announcements:

Brodie West Double Basses Quintet [Brodie West/Rob Clutton/Josh Cole/Nick Fraser wsg Chris Pruden] / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2025-07-09 (Wednesday – early)

The Cluttertones [Memory of Light live concert recording] / Array Space 2025-07-12 (Saturday, two performances at 8:00 and 9:10 p.m.). $20 or pwyc. [FB event]

More Noise Please! & Coward Patrol Present: A Night of Ritualistic Performance & Frightening Frequencies (feat. Compactor / Mr Clarinet / Hysteria [Xicada x Xodkaar] / Splinter Hex / Woujoud) / St Stephens-In-The-Fields (Back Hall) 2025-07-12 (Saturday). $15, all ages. [FB event]

Uma Nota Culture presents: Mixto Festival (feat. Bia Ferreira x Brasa / Empanadas Ilegales / Inkloosiv Voices / Moneka and Friends / Orbital Ensemble) / Trillium Park 2025-07-12&13 (Saturday & Sunday). $free, outdoors, family + pet friendly. [FB event]

Linda Catlin Smith Jukebox Fundraiser and Vinyl Release Party [featuring a jukebox-style performance of Linda’s exquisite solo and small chamber works by TENMC musicians, first access to Dark Flower on vinyl, delicious spread, cash bar, and an enticing silent auction] (feat. members of Thin Edge New Music Collective) / Array Space 2025-07-31 (Thursday). $free, advance tickets by donation. [FB event]

Stars / CNE Bandshell 2025-08-17 (Sunday). $free with admission to The Ex, outdoors, all ages. [more info]

Jay Douglas / CNE Bandshell 2025-08-21 (Thursday). $free with admission to The Ex, outdoors, all ages. [more info]

The Rural Alberta Advantage / CNE Bandshell 2025-08-28 (Thursday). $free with admission to The Ex, outdoors, all ages. [more info]

Is your show missing from this list? Submit it via this form!

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Shows this week:

Brittany Pitt's Reverie [Brittany Pitt/Dan Pitt/Caleb Klager/Stephen Hegerat] / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2025-06-30 (Monday). $15/pwyc. [more info]

Track Could Bend #106 (feat. Cudmore/Perera Duo / Ariadna Ortega / Grace Scheele) / Wenona Craft Beer Lodge 2025-07-01 (Tuesday). $pwyc. [FB event]

What's Left: No Canada Day Solidarity Fundraiser (feat. Truth of All Death / Kleener / Levithan / Maebh/Dame Cook) / Houndstooth 2025-07-01 (Tuesday). $pwyc. [more info]

Holy Oak Family Singers Presents (feat. Alex Lukashevsky / Ben Rositsan) / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2025-07-02 (Wednesday – early)

Peripheral Vision (Titanium Riot) / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2025-07-02 (Wednesday) [more info]

Lorde Awesome (Vörtlimpa / Sasquatch Picnic / Jon Dough) / The Tranzac (Main Hall) 2025-07-04 (Friday). $10/pwyc. [FB event]

H.E.A.D. Opening Weekend (feat. Colin Fisher/Patrick O'Reilly / Dame Cook) / H.E.A.D. 2025-07-04 (Friday). $pwyc. [more info]

Prince Nifty & Colin Fisher / Le Monde 2025-07-05 (Saturday). $20/pwyw. [more info]

H.E.A.D. Opening Weekend (feat. Duo Cichorium / Karen Ng/Colin Cudmore) / H.E.A.D. 2025-07-05 (Saturday). $pwyc. [more info]

Friendship (2nd Grade / Eliza Niemi) / Array Space 2025-07-05 (Saturday). $26.43, 19+. [FB event]

Sonomadic Improv (feat. UBERSUCK [Germaine Liu & Kayla Milmine] / Ariadna Ortega & Colin Cudmore / Jonathan Kay/Patrick O’Reilly/Bodhisattwa Ghosh) / Annette Studios 2025-07-06 (Sunday). $pwyc

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It happened this week...

• ...on June 30, 2011 at The Garrison.

SIANspheric - Jahm

• ...on July 6, 2011 at Lee's Palace.

Omar Souleyman - Leh Jani

[Do remember that you can click on the tags below to go back and find the original posts (and often, more stuff) from these artists.]

Monday Roundup #21

In the absence of concert listings, my regular Monday dispatches have fallen off. After bringing some life to the blog with the "bumping into" series, I figure I should get back in the groove. I'm guessing that this will be a bit like what used to get shoved into the end of the post when I was doing listings — some bandcamp suggestions, nods to a few livestreams, and sundry community notes (email me if you have anything that needs broadcast in the latter category!). Plus maybe a look back through the MFS archives.

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Community notes:

• Congratulations to Music Gallery Artistic Director Sanjeet Takhar, whose first curatorial project comes to light this week. Her new "What Is" series is promised as an annual event to both embrace and break down genre conventions. The first edition, "What is: Soul" offers five events over the next week, including a "one hour vocal lesson on how to sing full from the confines of your apartment" with dreamcastmoe (Tuesday, June 8th), a conversation on "the culture around music sharing" with Eugene Tam and Raf Reza (Wednesday, June 9th), a workshop that explores putting emotion into music with Byron the Aquarius (Thursday, June 10th), a "panel discussion curated by Anupa Mistry exploring how urban resilience, cultural exchange, and femme resourcefulness can liberate the soul of the city" (Friday, June 11th), and a "special webcast performance & record release by multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Angel Bat Dawid, one of the leading lights of Chicago's avant-jazz, boundary-defying labels, International Anthem and The Village, the like-minded L.A.-based record label stemming from the work and legacy of the Pan Afrikan People's Arkestra" (Saturday, June 12th). A free registration (found here) gets you access to all events.

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Livestream nation:

• Audiopollination returns Wednesday (June 9th) with a performance from Love Children of the Apocalypse (Elizabeth Lima and Michael Lynn). Call it free-spirit improvisation; last time around they were gettin' physical, aerobic class style — who knows what inspiration will arise from lockdown fever dreams? (free to stream via Arraymusic)

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It happened this week...

• ...on June 9, 2012 at Wrongbar.

Omar Souleyman - unknown

• ...on June 10, 2013 at Array Space.

Joshua Abrams' Natural Information Society - Boro

[Do remember that you can click on the tags below to go back and find the original posts (and often, more stuff) from these artists.]

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Bandcamp corner:

• Let us once more praise Telephone Explosion — Toronto's most essential Pandemic-era label. After issuing plenty of stone grooves last year, their most recent couple offerings hew towards singer-songwriter vibes. Dorothea Paas' Anything Can't Happen is sadly in love, with hints of hauntings and plenty folky flourishes, while Andre Ethier's Further Up Island spends some extra time in producer's Sandro Perri's backyard with organic sonic textures creeping a bit further into the foreground.

Recording: Omar Souleyman

Artist: Omar Souleyman

Song: Leh Jani

Recorded at Lee's Palace, July 6, 2011.

Omar Souleyman - Leh Jani

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: Omar Souleyman

Omar Souleyman

Lee's Palace. Wednesday, July 6, 2011.

Even in the "flat" internet era of culture, it's a weird, random crapshoot when it comes to encountering things from outside our own sphere — and seemingly even more random to consider what catches on. As such, I was a little surprised — but rather pleasantly so — that Syrian wedding singer Omar Souleyman was making it here for a gig.

I was curious about whom the audience would be for this — the fact that the show was at Lee's hinted that the presumed crowd was more from the "rock" side of things than the "world" side. That would dovetail with the marketing reach of label Sublime Frequencies, who had introduced Souleyman to a Western audiences beyond the diasporic communities. And, indeed, as folks started to trickle in, there were "plenty hipsters," according to my notes. Also: music nerds, crate diggers and folks who like a certain kind of trance-inducing dance music, regardless of its provenance.

There'd be no opener, and as ten o'clock rolled around it was filled in pretty nicely. There was an austere stage setup, with just a single mic stand and a double-racked pair of Korg keybs — Souleyman was without the electric saz that he has toured with in the past (as can be heard on the Haflat Gharbia/The Western Concerts live album) so it would just be him and keyboard player Rizan Sa'id.

After a brief introduction by Sublime Frequency's Mark Gergis, Souleyman took the stage, the set starting with the toned-down, almost ambient drift of "Mawal Hejaz", acting as a sort of moment of pause before things really got moving. But after that, the dance party was on — the remainder of the show would only include seven songs, but they were all long ones each stretching out to fill the hour-long set.

Souleyman sings traditional songs touching on eternal themes (mostly love won and lost) but this is thoroughly modern music. Powered by turbo-speed, electrified dabke beats and wiggly synth lines, at some points in doubletime bursts and in others acting as a call-and-response echo to the vocals. Each song leads with Souleyman's "heeeeeeeeeeeyy!" and he quickly had the crowd worked into a dancing, clapping roil.

Souleyman surely does know a thing or two about how to work a crowd, even if, by North American standards, his body language is strikingly minimal. He's not animated, but definitely into it. In the instrumental passages, he'd tuck the mic under his arm and lead the crowd in triple-burst claps, the faint flicker of a smile under his moustache. He had a repertoire of about four basic gestures:

1. "come closer"
2. clap-clap-clap
3. upraised index finger, as if he were denoting the first item in a list
4. shaking the microphone like a rattle

And yet there was no doubt that he was an entertainer.

Musically, Souleyman has been releasing cassettes since the mid-90's and has a pretty huge repertoire, but I was able to pick out some of the "hits" like "Leh Jani" and "Shift al Mani". And though the songs are all built from the same musical palette, there's enough (like the mutated disco groove of "Mendel") to distinguish the songs if you're so inclined.

For most of this audience, the individual songs weren't the point so much as the whole of the experience. Given how much energy one could spend dancing away, the hour-long set felt like about the right amount — but not quite enough for the knot of enthusiasts up front who kept up a chant of "O-MAR" to try and bring him back for one more.

It was interesting to try and gauge the personality behind Souleyman's persona. His image, with his always-present keffiyeh and aviator shades, impart a vision of stone-faced unknowability. And though there's no doubt plenty cultural cues that I'm not picking up on, his look seems to be most craftedly "Other" — as I'm sure some Culture Studies grad student is busily dissertating on right now.

I know there are some with more of an inside view of Arabic culture that scoff a bit at Souleyman's relative success — that he's just a wedding singer, and that you could go to a marketplace and pick up umpteen tapes by guys just like that. And perhaps that's so — but that's no less true for pretty much any "indie" band I dig, and that doesn't make them any less special. And from an outsider's view, it's also tempting to say that if there was a musical genius on the stage at this show, that it was Sa'id, with his compositions, post-modern rhythms and insanely gnarly keyb work. But in the end, the reason that this works and the reason this was a memorable show is the same as it is for anything that invokes the body-movin' imperative: "shut up and dance" trumps most any analysis you can come up with.

I posted a track from this show at the time here — and now there's also one more here.

Recording: Omar Souleyman

Artist: Omar Souleyman

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Wrongbar, June 9, 2012.

Omar Souleyman - unknown

Full review to follow. This felt a bit more like a dance party than the last time Souleyman was in town, even if the musicians could never quite get the sound on stage going to their satisfaction.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!

Recording: Omar Souleyman

Artist: Omar Souleyman

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Lee's Palace, July 6, 2011.

Omar Souleyman - unknown

Review to follow — My notes for this set can now be found here but if all the cool kids suddenly start dabke bands in the next little while, please note that this is the reason why.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!