INSPIRED MUSICIANS BRING NEW SPICES TO GLOBAL SOUP
Caribbean-Canadian Kater uses banjo and guitar in eclectic ways as she tours new album
If you imagine global music streams as some giant soup pot, then the all-important part is that new generations of musicians keep coming along to taste that soup and give it their own stir.
Montreal-born singer Kaia Kater has cherished memories of the sounds of Smithsonian Folkways — perhaps the world’s first record label dedicated to preserving traditions of song far and wide. So it couldn’t be more appropriate that Kater’s latest album Grenades is being released by the Washington D.C.-based label.
“Folkways is kind of ubiquitous in the childhoods of a lot of musicians,” Kater notes. “I think it’s so interesting that there’s this nostalgic element to it while they were putting out these really strange and cool records. I love that those records will always be in print because it’s a non-profit label, and the great thing is that they have decided to start signing contemporary artists like myself.”
It’s coincidental that Kater is performing here this weekend for the annual Women of Folkways concert, sponsored by the U of A Sound Studies office and Northern Lights Folk Club.
She met the other two women on the concert bill — Maria Dunn and Dana Wylie — in the summer of 2017 at the Salmon Arms Roots & Blues Festival, so it’s fitting that she join them again on stage Saturday for a concert that celebrates the great Folkways legacy and serves up new music with it.
For her part in the Women of Folkways show, Kater plans to highlight classic pioneers of the label such as Elizabeth Cotton and Malvena Reynolds, and to add her new songs on banjo and guitar.
Kater is the child of a Canadian mother and a father from the Caribbean island of Grenada, which hints at her eclectic music upbringing. She learned to play the banjo in her early teens, and eventually attended college in West Virginia, using the chance to absorb everything she could of Appalachian music and clawhammer banjo technique.
“I think the banjo is defying a lot of its previous stereotypes. It can inhabit a lot of different roles and I hope to help broaden those horizons.”
Today, after living in Toronto for three years, her career seems to be in full bloom. Just back from her fourth tour of Britain, Kater has been winning notices from the BBC, CBC, National Public Radio, Rolling Stone, and others. After releasing a couple of albums that plumbed roots traditions in the Appalachians and elsewhere, her sound has an enervating slice of past, present and future.
Kater’s new all-original album Grenades takes it’s title from her father’s background in Grenada, specifically from the American invasion of that island in 1979, and her father’s departure for Canada three years later. In addition to some excellent songs, several tied to the invasion, occasional spoken “interludes” feature her father reading from his diaries of the time.
syRian cLaRinet viRtuoso aZMeH pLays aRden tHeatRe
Syrian-born clarinetist Kinan Azmeh holds the unique claim of playing Edmonton’s first virtual live musical collaboration, via Skype. It happened about five years ago when he was booked to play with two other musicians. Canadian customs refused to approve his papers at the last minute, so he played his gorgeous clarinet sounds via Skype, projected behind the others in the Horowitz Theatre. I’m still amazed that it actually worked, given the builtin digital delay, but it was a memorable show.
The good news is that this multi-faceted Julliard-trained virtuoso will finally be here in the flesh with his New York-based quartet CityBand, tapping into a melange of traditional Middle Eastern, jazz, and western classical streams this Saturday at St. Albert’s Arden Theatre.
This is a show with audience appeal beyond conventional genres. The fearless, hugely talented composer-improviser refuses to create boundaries around his sounds.
“I never think about where my music comes from," Azmeh says. "I’m trained as a classical clarinetist and that’s at the heart of lots that I do, but I also get jazz from living in New York, and there’s the music I grew up listening to in Syria, and I don’t hear these barriers where world music ends and rock and roll begins. I don’t really see the differences between the genres. When I write for my bands or for orchestras I just write what I like, and I like a lot of stuff.”
Formed in 2006 in New York, Azmeh’s CityBand quartet features Kyle Sanna’s electric guitar, Josh Myers’ acoustic and electric bass, and John Hadfield’s unique drum-percussion set. Most of the tunes are originals by the clarinetist but the band contributes too, and their chemistry ensures that every night brings a different outcome in the balance.
“We’re always trying to blur the lines between improvisation and compositions.”
To give you an idea of Azmeh’s wide-ranging musical enthusiasm, know that his forthcoming release Uneven Sky is a double-album of disparate material including
three clarinet concertos written for him, incorporating improvisations and another set of originals, all performed with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchestra of Berlin and with friend Yo-Yo Ma on cello. Fascinating stuff.
While Azmeh has been based in New York City since he arrived to study at Julliard in 2000, he spends about nine months of the year on tour, and he can’t forget his upbringing in Damascus, Syria’s capital — a frequent source of worry given the disaster of ongoing war.
“When you think about this human tragedy the magnitude is hard to grasp. Half of the country’s population has been displaced or gone missing, and half a million killed. Then you think of yourself, playing clarinet, making music, you start to question if what you do has any value. At first I could hardly play, but then I decided I had to express myself as loud as I can. Without thinking, music has become even more urgent. Out of this urgency I have to share something with the world.”