Events

Hailed as one of the most vital standard-bearers of modern African music, singer, songwriter, and guitarist Fatoumata Diawara is taking her artistry to fresh and thrilling heights. Boldly experimental yet respectful of her Malian roots, Fatoumata’s music defines her as the voice of young African womanhood – proud of her heritage but with a vision that looks confidently to the future. Her live performances “scream with energy” (NPR), her stage presence both “hypnotic” and “captivating” (Rolling Stone). Fatoumata’s most recent release, Fenfo, is a set of vivid and original new compositions that draw on the rich experiences and musical adventures she’s enjoyed in recent years. A modern day storyteller, Fatoumata covers such timeless subjects as respect, humility, love, migration, family and how to build a better world for our children in her music. “Don’t sing just to sing,” she emphasizes, “sing to change things, to make things better.”

As a singer, actress, songwriter, and activist, Fatoumata has shared her message and experience with audiences all over the world. With performances at Glastonbury and other major festivals, Fatoumata has also worked with some of the biggest names in contemporary music. She recorded with Bobby Womack and Herbie Hancock; assembled a West African super-group featuring Amadou and Mariam, Oumou Sangaré, and Toumani Diabaté to record a song calling for peace in her troubled homeland; climbed aboard Damon Albarn’s star-studded Africa Express, which culminated in her sharing a stage with Sir Paul McCartney; and performed with countless other esteemed musicians such as Omara Portuondo, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Habib Koité, Roberto Fonseca, and Rokia Traoré. In fact, it was fellow Malian songstress Rokia Traoré who encouraged Fatoumata to pick up a guitar, a suggestion that opened the door to her career in music.

Welcome to a unique and immersive poetry event that takes poetry outside classrooms and lecture halls and places it in the lush interiors of a bordello. The Madame presents a rotating cast of poets, each operating within a carefully crafted character, who share their work in public readings, spontaneous eruptions of poetry, and most distinctly, as purveyors of private poetry readings on beds, chaise lounges and in private rooms. For a fee, all of the poets are available for these sequestered readings at any time during the event. Of course, any true bordello need a good cover; ours is an immersive cabaret featuring poetry, burlesque, live music, vaudeville, aerials, visual art, magic, and mysticism, with newly integrated themes, performances and installations at each event.

Doors open at 8pm, and the show begins promptly at 8:30pm. As usual the festivities will be presided over by your hosts Mister Charley, The Madame, and that rapscallion, Tennessee Pink. For more information, including featured performers and thematic details, please visit thepoetrybrothel.com. Costumes and/or cocktail attire are encouraged but not required. The Poetry Brothel staged show will wrap up around 11:30pm, but feel free to stay on for a free dance party, where the poets and mystics will continue to be available for private readings. 

*VIP Admission

Includes reserved priority seating, a surprise gift, and two premium private reading tokens good for readings with any of the poetry whores, the featured readers for the night, and/or The Madame or Tennessee Pink, creators of The Poetry Brothel

AWP Attendees

Ticket holders must show their AWP Conference badges at the box office to collect these half-price tickets

Home. Where the heart is. For Bombino and most other Tuareg, there’s only one place that can be. In recent years, the rest of the world has largely written off that home as a hot and savage wasteland, a bolt hole for religious extremists and terrorists, a geopolitical video nasty with little to offer apart from the oil, gold and phosphates that lie beneath its soil. But Bombino would like us to take a closer look and think again. His feelings are beautifully summed up in the song “Tehigren” (‘Trees’), from his brand new album ‘Deran’: ‘Do not forget the green trees / In our valleys in the Sahara / In the shade of which, / Rest the beautiful girls / Radiant and lovable’. How to celebrate that desert home, how to protect it, develop it, unify it, respect it and, above all, never forget it, are the salient themes of ‘Deran.’ They’re dressed up in ten songs of rare maturity and power that mark a turning point in the career of a guitarist and songwriter who was born in the shade of an acacia tree about eighty miles north west of the ancient town of Agadez, and has since risen to forefront of the new Tuareg guitar generation. It’s a turning back the source of everything that makes Bombino who he is. “My mission for this album was always to get closer to Africa,” he says. Not surprising then that the decision was made to record ‘Deran’ as close as possible to his native Niger in the southern Sahara. The ideal venue emerged in the shape of Studio Hiba, a top flight recording facility owned by King Mohammed VI (he loves his tunes, apparently) located in a fairly drab industrial suburb of Casablanca in Morocco. There Bombino and his steady longterm band - fellow Tuareg Illias Mohammed on guitar and vocals, American Corey Wilhelm on drums and percussion and the Mauritanian (living in Belgium) Youba Dia on bass - slept, ate and made music in blissful isolation. Their circle was widened by Moroccan percussionist Hassan Krifa, and by Bombino’s cousins Anana ag Haroun (lead singer of the Brussels-based Tuareg band Kel Assouf), and Toulou Kiki (singer and star of the film Timbuktu), who dropped in to add some ‘gang’ vocals. After Casablanca, the tapes flew to Boston to be embellished by Sudanese friend and keyboardist Mohammed Araki.

How does one define John 5? Is he rock? Is it country? Is he heavy metal? What about emo, industrial or bluegrass? Truth is there is no one set genre to fit John 5. In a world where music must be defined, John 5 breaks every mould by continually changing and adapting his style. Although he is unmistakably John 5 in his sound, he mixes around with the foundation with every new track he writes, every album he guests on and every time he picks up the guitar.

Nurtured by equal parts raucous underground bass parties and all ages folk festivals, Delhi 2 Dublin’s always distinctive sound has evolved over the past decade into its own decisive genre, styled, “Subcontinental Pop”—a name that conveys both its deep South Asian roots and its expansive, crazy-fun appeal. The beautifully supercharged complexity of their sound flows from high-level folk and alternative-pop, blended and delivered across an array of acoustic instruments—dhol, tabla, violin, guitar—and electronic beats——and immersed in smart, heavy, sometimes gritty, and almost invariably joyful beats.

Averaging 100 shows a year in places ranging from Canadian and U.S. clubs to Glastonbury and Burning Man to performing for over 100,000 people at Canada Day celebrations, Delhi 2 Dublin have the gift of connecting with masses of people, pulverizing their inhibitions, and getting them moving.

In recent years, Delhi 2 Dublin’s has been honing their songwriting skills, which is most evident on their upcoming album, We Got This, which will be released through Warner Canada in Fall 2018. The album was produced by Toronto hitmaker Gavin Brown (Barenaked Ladies, Metric, Tragically Hip), who helped them harness their socially conscious sensibilities and awareness of their place in the world into making their most personal and meaningful collection of songs to date.