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Music

X Avant Festival

X AVANT FESTIVAL at the Music Gallery (197 John) and Remix Lounge (1305 Dundas West), Thursday to Sunday (October 16-19). $10-$20, festival pass $40. SS, musicgallery.org


Music Gallery programmer David Dacks sounds acutely aware of the potential political minefield he’s stepping into by framing the ninth edition of the experimental music institution’s X Avant Festival around the concept of transculturalism.

“It’s very common to see articles now about cultural appropriation, and being an increasingly older white guy, I’ve realized the privileged status that I have,” says Dacks in the Music Gallery’s green room. “So what do you do about that? Where do you go from there? And how do you make meaningful contributions? A lot of that has to do with stepping back and letting other people do their things by helping create the winning conditions.”

The conditions he’s referring to are the established Music Gallery audience’s receptivity to new sounds, access to the org’s beautiful performance space in St. George the Martyr Church and – perhaps most importantly – the funding for unique one-off collaborations that make X Avant so unique (see below).

While the series has long been known for showcasing the more experimental aspects of pop music alongside purely avant-garde work, it also provides a forum for discussion through various talks and interviews. Among the panels this year is Mississauga Goddamn (Sunday, October 19, at the Music Gallery, moderated by Anupa Mistry), whose name riffs on a self-deprecating line from a Hidden Cameras song but will actually celebrate the giant suburban city and its ever-blossoming music scene.

“There’s an amazing amount of vitality and creativity coming from these places that are so often written off as banal. It’s important to underline that there are a lot of truly intracultural movements within the Greater Toronto Area that are perhaps not recognized as such,” says Dacks.

“I’m not a Facebook warrior about these things, and sometimes I wish I were, but I’ve got a budget supplied by three levels of government that I can try to spend on issues that really matter.”


Transcultural Collaborations: The fest’s best teamwork

As exciting as it is to see rare Toronto appearances by acts like Drums and Drones (aka Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase and visual artist Ursula Scherrer, October 17), cutting-edge Brooklyn DJ Ushka and NYC writer/musician/DJ Jace Clayton (both on October 18), a big part of what makes X Avant special are the festival-specific one-off collaborations. We chose the best of the fest.

Lido Pimienta

(Sunday, October 19, 8 pm, Music Gallery)

The Colombian-Canadian performer curated her showcase and will be joined onstage by Anishinaabe multi-instrumentalist Melody McKiver (who also appears as part of the October 18 panel discussion Ethnocultural Baggage And Contemporary Classical Music) and Mas Aya (Toronto experimental musician Brandon Valdivia), with visuals by Adrienne Crossman and Peter Rahul.

Phrase Velocity

(Friday, October 17, 8 pm, Music Gallery)

Opening for NYC’s Drums and Drones, Phrase Velocity are local tabla virtuoso Ed Hanley and Jonathan Adjemian, who’ll electronically deconstruct Hanley’s intricate percussion patterns and provide a synthetic bed of droning sound waves to surround and complement the complicated polyrhythms.

Laraaji and Diely Mori Tounkara + friends

(Thursday, October 17, 8 pm, Music Gallery)

NYC electric zither player Laraaji’s career has seen a recent revival with the reissue of some of his 1970s ambient work with Brian Eno. As well as performing solo, he’ll also be teaming up with Montreal-based kora player Tounkara and local experimental musicians Colin Fisher, Scott Peterson and Valdivia.

benjaminb@nowtoronto.com | @benjaminboles

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