"When I was back in Kenya, I'd heard Canada was cold and I thought PEI, being an island, would be warmer," singer/songwriter Ruth Mathiang remembers with a laugh.

Juno winner Lorraine Klaasen similarly recalls her impressions of Canada. "I came in 1978 at the height of...

For acclaimed jazz composer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, the avant-garde is much more than a genre in the art world; its imperative of experimentation has been the foundation of his artistic life. Named as one of three finalists for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in music,...

Idle No More is grabbing headlines across the country. The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, celebrating its 14th incarnation in 2013, has seen audiences increasing steadily over the last few years. In 2012, 14,000 people took in its varied program of film, multimedia, music and more.

Borderlands: Wu Man and the Master Musicians of the Silk Route on the Smithsonian Folkways label is the 10th and final CD/DVD set in the award-winning "Music of Central Asia" series, co-produced with the Aga Khan Music Initiative. It follows the journey of musician Wu Man...

When most North Americans think of Madagascar, they think of the adorable animated creatures who inhabit the DreamWorks Madagascar film franchise, currently into its third installation with the recent release of Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted which hit movie screens last month. Setting aside any issues of biological accuracy --...

This HBO Documentary on the life and work of Marina Abramović, which airs in Canada this month, will be of interest to performance art enthusiasts, to be sure, but should be of interest to all the sceptics out there as well. "The most important is from which state of mind...

It's a hot afternoon in September when I meet with Canadian playwright (screenwriter and director and producer) extraordinaire Brad Fraser at Church and Charles for a caffeine fix and to talk about the release of his latest play 5 at 50 in book form (Playwrights Press 2012).

I caught up with Young Jean Lee, often described as a rising star of avant-garde theatre, on the phone just as her production of The Shipment begins performances in Toronto.

To say that the theatrical works of Young Jean Lee are thematically diverse is something of...

"The platforms for black dance are so narrow," states acclaimed Australian independent choreographer Bernadette Walong-Sene.

It was a sentiment that echoed over and over in the panel discussion I attended at the 2012 International Association of Blacks in Dance (I.A.B.D.) Conference that just ended Sunday, January 30 in Toronto...

A few years ago, I tuned out the news. It wasn't really meant to be a permanent decision, but nonetheless I did make a clean break with TV and radio newscasts, newspapers, and news magazines (although it's virtually impossible to entirely escape headlines when you're on the Internet). Around the...

Prosecutor
Law. No Order.
A documentary film screening and Q&A with Luis Moreno Ocampo, Stephen Lewis and filmmaker Barry Stevens
Nov. 14, 2011 in Toronto

"The Nazis killed millions of people. We said never again. We were wrong."

"The age of impunity is ending."

These...

I come from a culture that doesn't dance.

There is a series of videos you may be fortunate enough to catch on YouTube at some point. It comes from a 1966 film of the Berliner Philharmoniker performing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony under Herbert von Karajan (and the reason you probably...

I was going to be an important and well-paid writer, see. The modelling thing, that was just to tide me over till the whole writing gig took off, because I knew that you could basically walk in off the street and get work taking your clothes off for artists. But...

I interviewed South African trumpet player and composer Hugh Masekela on tour last year. At 71, he's been playing and recording since the late 1950s, and his work has been variously filed under jazz, classical, contemporary North American adult, and as African music, all terms he has little time for....

I just finished reading To See The Mountain and other stories, the anthology for the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing, and it struck me with a feeling that took me back to my university days some 25 years ago.

I was studying French at McMaster University,...