Friday, May 23, 2014

Artistic Director Speaks - Komagata Maru Blues


Artistic Director Speaks: Neelamjit Dhillon Quartet and Michael Blake 
Two Visions / Remembrances:  Komagata Maru
(by: Ken Pickering) May 23, 2014
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Before we get to the connection with the Jazz Festival a little preamble is required because today's the day.

I read the two articles by Marsha Lederman (Globe and Mail) that follow over the past 24 hours. 

Sadly and only a short time before the ceremonies marking the 100th anniversary of the 1914 Komagata Maru incident the public monument commemorating the incident (hundreds of men stranded in the harbour for two months and then refused entry into Canada despite the fact that they were British subjects) has been defaced for the second time in recent months. May 23, 2014 –  today - marks that anniversary. The lack of respect for this important monument that commemorates one of the darkest incidents in the history of British Columbia is an indictment on the perpetrators - so depressing and undignified - they should be spanked in public. It’s really pathetic that we still have to endure this sort of nonsense in today’s Vancouver.

On a more positive note this article talks about the man behind the project that marks the 100th anniversary and tells the fantastic story of the brick.

Perhaps lesser known is the connection of the Komagata Maru incident to the Jazz Festival. Two very different musicians (Neelamjit Dhillon and Michael Blake), both with Vancouver roots, but living (at least some of the time) elsewhere have developed their own separate independent projects that reflect on that story of xenophobia and social injustice that we would like to think would have been completely eradicated in today's Canadian cultural mosaic – but that seems to not be the reality. Even so, Vancouver still seems to be one of the more culturally open cities in this world in my experience. In addition to the music, we'll also be co-hosting an unconventional colloquium that will focus on some of these issues - who belongs?

So what's going on?


The Neelamjit Dhillon Quartet - Komagata Maru (Chris Gestrin – piano, André Lachance – bass, Dan Gaucher – drums, Neelamjit – tabla) will explore in a 60 minute work, where we have come from, where we are and where we hope to go. 
Social justice and marginalized people within our social fabric will be central themes in a work that encapsulates a musical language bridging jazz and classical Indian forms from the perspective of a South Asian in today’s multi-cultural Canadian society. 
Neelamjit Dhillon Quartet – Komagata Maru performs – Saturday, June 21st at Performance Works 1:30pm  - free to the public.



Michael Blake’s – The Komagata Maru Blues will explore the incident from another perspective with a stellar jazz ensemble of Vancouver’s finest improvisers (Ron Samworth – guitar, Peggy Lee – cello, Dylan van der Schyff – drums, Chris Gestrin – keyboards, JP Carter – trumpet and André Lachance - bass). It's worth noting that both Chris and André are performing in both projects. The music will be very different! Sunday, June 22 at The Ironworks 9pm ($25)

For Brooklyn based (but Vancouver raised) Michael Blake there’s an ancestral connection. A man named HH Stevens was an important politician and MP during the Komagata Maru era and was responsible for much of the anti-Asian bias at the time. Ends up he was not only a bigot and an expulsionist, but was also a distant relative and an embarrassment to later generations of his family for his racist views. 
Michael Blake’s project will be a remembrance that will honour the lives of those people who were affected by those policies of racial exclusion.

An Unconventional Colloquium - Improvising Across Boundaries 
June 21 and 22 at Robson Square Room C400 from 10am (free)
There will also be an unconventional festival colloquium co-presented with UBC –that ties into these themes. Focusing on ways in which improvisation  - in music, in theatre, in dance and text can offer strategies and practices to help us negotiate boundaries and borders, with the challenges presented by the politics of gender, history and social class or by multiculturalism, by race and racism. Inclusion and exclusion, community building or confrontation – can improvisation enable new modes of cultural and social understanding? 

Thanks to Rainbow Robert, Neelamjit Dhillon, Michael Blake 
Thanks to Barking Sphinx Performance Society. 

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