Another week in Montréal, another festival to break new ground. The Elektra International Digital Arts Festival (May 1-5) wrapped up its 14th year on Sunday, and its central place in the creative fabric of this city grows more certain with every year.

Finally! A record to play at my super fly space party, where the girls sport hot pink lacquered nails, and the boys wear buttoned up polos from Dad’s 80s closet. 

After months of anticipation and a week of hysterical weeping from the neighbours, we left to attend the opening of Opera da Camera’s first full production, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, at the Rialto on Friday. This is not a good theatre for opera, its acoustics are as successful as Greek government and significantly less loud, but its size worked to our advantage and the evening’s wrong notes faded into a glow of joy at close range.

In hindsight, who would have guessed nerdy South Asian missionary migrants to the United States in the early 20th century would give rise to the most hippest art form ever expressed: hip hop. To understand, rewind the boombox a mere 14 centuries prior, pickpocketing a particular 7th century Arabian prophetic tradition– “eloquent speech is as [...]

I’m a K’naan fan. His best work is up there with Bob’s Dylan and Marley. It is sincerely spiritual and welcoming like Marley’s, as politically stark as Marley’s or a young Dylan’s, and is carried off with the kind of wisdom and grace needed to deliver harsh truths. He can also carry a melody like Marley and cut a rhyme like Dylan.