Toronto wants to talk about racism in music. Badly.
This was clear by the over-capacity turnout for the Music: Racism, Power And Privilege 101 panel at the Music Gallery on Tuesday, November 24, which saw dozens of latecomers turned away at the door.
The PWYC event, organized and moderated by local musician April Aliermo and featuring a panel of mostly indie musicians, was prompted in part by the Viet Cong band-name controversy thats brewed for part of this year, a subject Aliermo wrote about in the widely read Exclaim article Not Yours To Play With: Why Viet Congs Name Offends.
And so the discussions focused on cultural appropriation, white privilege and what is and isnt racist, the night playing out as a gently moderated educational primer on racism, sometimes heavy on academic jargon.
The panelists Yamantaka // Sonic Titans Alaska B, cellist Cris Derksen, Fucked Ups Damian Abraham, Pitchfork writer Max Mohenu, Highest Order/Fivers Simone Schmidt and PhD candidate Kim de Laat answered 18 questions submitted anonymously online beforehand, a format that meant they talked for the entire two hours.
You could feel something shift in the room frustration sweeping in near the end when Aliermo said there wouldnt be time for audience questions.
Earlier, bolder members of the crowd had found ways to insert themselves into the discussion. One woman took issue with the frequent use of the term people of colour (it was decided that racialized was preferable) and another with redneck. A complaint about the academic language of the panelists, and how it points to socioeconomic privilege, was also lobbed.
But it was the events emotional ending that drove home the need for more discussions like this. A woman near the front broke down in tears as she expressed her disappointment in the lack of black music representation rap, soca, reggae on the panel.
She said it was triggering for her to not see anyone from her own community represented, or people who had been doing this type of educational and activist work for the last 25 years.
Aliermo apologized and stressed that this was just a small step toward opening up discussions within the music community, and that the panels title should have perhaps specified a focus on indie music.
Still, the night was far from a bust. Alaska B, who did the lions share of talking, made a great distinction between punching up (like a good comedian, she said) versus punching down (like a bully).
Mohenu encouraged people to keep engaging in difficult discussions even when the conversation gets really hot. To one of the online questions about asking how people can show admiration for other cultures without appropriating them, he pointed out that once somebody elses culture becomes an accessory, things become problematic.
An online question called out Abraham for having a bandmate formerly nicknamed Concentration Camp, to which he replied, “There are mistakes in our history,” and which led to his making a helpful distinction between offensiveness versus hatefulness in regards to his band name, Fucked Up.
Abraham also pointed to structural racism inherent in the Canadian music industry that sees a handful of largely white, indie-rock-focused record labels getting direct board approval for FACTOR funding.
Schmidt talked about how few music journalists are equipped to talk about politics at all, which is often why issues of race fail to get addressed in the media. She said it took Aliermos article, for example, for the Canadian music media to cover the debates and protests surrounding Viet Congs name.
Music is pushed as a culture of distraction rather than engagement, she said.
But it was the brief blitz of impassioned audience feedback at the end that offered the biggest takeaway.
The Toronto music community is hungry for frank, personal discussions about racism that encompass far more than the indie genre.
So lets, as many have since pointed out online, turn this into a monthly series already.
carlag@nowtoronto.com | @carlagillis
