Recording: Keita Juma

Artist: Keita Juma

Song: GRILL$

Recorded at The Garrison (Wavelength Music Festival 16 – Night 1), February 12, 2016.

Keita Juma - GRILL$

Wavelength's sixteenth anniversary festival was a little less adventurous than last year's sesquidecade spectacular. For the first time in recent memory, the festival settled into one home base for three nights (along with one daytime excursion off-site) and the programming eschewed retrospective turns for a future-focused weekend, daring audiences to invest in the musical here-and-now. It's always a good sign when an artist's strongest live material is the newest stuff and at this show, the tracks from the recent Nights In Space were particularly sizzling. Equally adept at creating excellent beats and holding an audience in the palm of his hand, KJ remains the local rapper that I'm most excited to see live. This was the most energizing set of the night and one of the weekend's best.

Recording: Keita Juma

Artist: Keita Juma

Songs: ¿YRWEONTHISBEACH? + Cashback [a capella]^*

Recorded at The Music Gallery ("X Avant X"), October 18, 2015.

Keita Juma - ¿YRWEONTHISBEACH?

Keita Juma - Cashback [a capella]

This year's X Avant not only celebrated the festival's tenth anniversary, but also the Music Gallery's 40th season. No surprise, then, that the festival incorporated various methods to look back at the MG's legacy — but also to look forward. It's a savvy bit of programming that saw Mississauga's darkwave bouncelord Keita Juma playing X Avant's final night, given the festival's stated goal of celebrating boundary-pushing music across all genres. KJ, meanwhile, adapted his performance to the space somewhat, focusing a bit more on his words than his grooves to engage the seated crowd that was more apt to head-nod than bounce. Beyond showcasing his ice-cold minimal production style, that also gave a chance to listen in as he grappled with some larger existential questions.

^* Thanks to Kehinde Bah for passing along the title to this one!

Recording: Keita Juma

Artist: Keita Juma

Song: Ancient Body Language

Recorded at The Great Hall ("Long Winter: Year Three, Volume One"), November 14, 2014.

Keita Juma - Ancient Body Language

The first instalment of the third Long Winter concert series followed the same template as has been seen as the past, but there were encouraging signs that the programming team are trying to challenge themselves — and the event's audience — to push their boundaries a little further. That was primarily expressed at this show with a heavier-than-usual hip-hop presence, inspired by an exhibition of Devon Little's photography. Call it "silo-busting", but it's always useful to be reminded that there are rich scenes beyond our own scenes — and that we shouldn't be genre reductive about all that "other" music. Keita Juma, for example, has a lot going on in his hip-hop tracks — this one, for example, would sound just as much at home with the dark-synth Silent Shout set. His new Chaos Theory release is still forthcoming, but you can sample his work over on his soundcloud page.