KAIA KATER and WALEED KUSH AFRICAN JAZZ ENSEMBLE with RUTH MAKIANG at Aga Khan Museum (77 Wynford), Saturday (February 24), 8 pm. $25. Includes museum admission. Round-trip shuttle from downtown, $5. agakhanmuseum.org.
“I always say to people, don’t call it world music. This is Canadian music,” says Waleed Abdulhamid from his home in Toronto. “If it’s been cooked in the Toronto kitchen, it’s Canadian music.”
The composer, multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, producer and Humber College professor has been cooking his music up in the Canadian kitchen since immigrating from Sudan in the early 1990s. And while his message has always veered toward global issues and politics, he feels that in the turbulent current moment it’s become more important than ever to use his platform to make music that reveals and heals.
“I feel like I’m a reporter,” says Abdulhamid. “I don’t sit down and make a song. I have to get inspired by you, by people around me, by an event.
“Music, like journalism, speaks to the state of the moment. Sometimes it can be happiness. Sometimes it can be woman abuse, child abuse, justice. That is what my music is, as well as reflecting the Indigenous people, Nubian and [other] Indigenous [people] from around the world.”
Having now lived here for more years than he lived in Sudan, he says that in many ways his current sound could only have been created here.
“Toronto is a meeting place. I’ve played with so many people all over the world. One time I played with a Tibetan musician and we didn’t even speak the same language, but I had the most beautiful gig in my life.”
His upcoming Waleed Kush African Jazz Ensemble performance with Kaia Kater (and special guest Ruth Makiang) at the Aga Khan Museum is being touted as “a journey from Nubia to Harlem via Appalachia, New Orleans, and Mississauga” – bridging ancient and modern sounds.
Kater, an exciting new face in the Toronto’s folk music scene, is excited.
“In the recent past, we so often associated ‘Black’ music with soul, R&B, gospel and hip-hop. The long legacy of the blues and jazz are at times neglected,” says the young singer/songwriter/banjo player from England, where she’s touring when I reach her. “I think it’ll be interesting to combine Kush’s identifiable African influences with mine, which lean toward American jazz and folk music.
“It’ll give the audience a wide breadth with which to look at the influence of the African diaspora on modern music as we know it.”
While Canada’s Black History Month, now in its 22nd official year, is a great opportunity to celebrate Black Canadians, Abdulhamid believes it can reach further to fully encapsulate the scope and scale of the diaspora. And he hopes this show will contribute to expanding minds.
“I would love for people to receive a piece of education about what Blackness means. What African means. What the art of Africa is. Not only shake and bake and wine. And hips and naked women. It’s way more than that,” he explains.
“If you love jazz, Africa is where jazz comes from. If you love funk, that’s where funk comes from. If you are young and love hip-hop, that’s where hip-hop comes from. Reggae, calypso, rock! African rhymes have influenced the whole world.”
Kater agrees. “I think it’s important to celebrate the musical traditions of our ancestors, and to fight – peacefully but forcefully – against the erasure of Black achievements,” she says. “Music is a way to speak about the past while also relishing the possibilities of the future.
“Ultimately people are coming to the show to learn a little more about us, and maybe about themselves as well.”
music@nowtoronto.com | @chakavgrier
