Research Library

Wayde Compton is a Black Canadian writer/poet, DJ, and historian, born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. Compton has published two books of poetry: 49th Parallel Psalm, and Performance Bond. He has also edited an anthology, Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Orature, and recently a collection of essays entitled, After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region.

George Elliott Clarke is one of Canada’s most prolific poets. He is also a renowned essayist, scholar, playwright, and, in many ways, a songwriter. His work largely explores and chronicles the experience and history of the black Canadian community of Nova Scotia, creating a cultural geography that Clarke refers to as “Africadia.” Clarke was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia in 1960, near the Black Loyalist community of Three Mile Plains, as a seventh-generation Canadian of African American and Mi’Kmaq Amerindian heritage.

d’bi.young anitafrika is a Jamaican-Canadian dub poet, monodramatist, educator, and Dora Award-winning actor and playwright. In this month’s Oral History we are gifted with an on stage interview with d’bi.young, and we get to witness the power of dub poetry in action by one of Canada’s most renowned dub poets.

Cecil Foster is one of Canada’s leading public intellectuals on issues of race, culture, citizenship, and immigration. Born in 1954, he became a journalist in Barbados before emigrating to Canada, where he began reporting for the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. He worked as a senior editor for the Financial Post and in national radio news and national television news for CBC Toronto and for CTV News Network. Between 1979 and 1982, he was the editor of Contrast, Canada’s first Black-oriented newspaper.

In this poetic exploration of sound, silence, movement and places, director João França provides a glimpse into a magical world where musicians of diverse ages and abilities come together in an inclusive and supportive environment to explore the possibilities of improvisational collaborations (music, dance, and visual art). Following the experiences of the participants of the second annual Musical Improvisation at Land’s End / Coin-du-Banc en folie summer camp, which seeks to connect members of various communities with profound experiences of improvised music making, this short documentary interweaves the personal experiences of the camp participants with the breathtaking landscapes of Coin-du-Banc, Quebec and the surrounding areas. Why I’m Here / Pourquoi je suis ici offers an encounter between music, community, and place, painted in the delicate colours and textures of the Gaspé Peninsula.

IICSI’s research outcomes during the first half of our SSHRC PG (2022–2027)—Improvising Futures (IF)—including free form-digital toy (video game), critical theory, reports, films, summer camps, and community programs—have been broadly shared via our peer-reviewed journal, research websites, ongoing annual conferences across multiple sites, our book series with Duke University Press, and hundreds of other peer-reviewed publications. Our team has also organized and hosted improvisatory arts festivals, workshops, talks, residencies, performances, and more!

The culture and technology of Electronic Music has seen tremendous developments over the last decade. Thanks to the increased availability, affordability and accessibility of equipment, the artform’s popularity has exploded worldwide. One booming area is that of “Sequencer-based Improvisation”, which entails the synchronizing of one or more instruments together via a “Master Clock”, then using sequencers, sound design, audio mixers, and effects, to spontaneously compose fluid and spontaneous music in real-time.

Dr. Rashida K. Braggs screens and discusses “Amber in the City of Light,” a solo multimedia performance that shares and re-envisions the experiences of Black African diasporic women jazz artists who have migrated to Paris, France. Culling original interviews, field notes and archival research, Dr. Rashida K. Braggs enacts multiple narratives through an embodied performance that merges original song, dance, poetry and theatre.

DJ Zahra Habib takes you on the cosmic experience that is Lunar Rotations, blending musical selections with narrative overtones that connect the sounds with the theme of arriving at an eternally internal freedom: Eleutheria.

The stated purpose of the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation is “…to create positive social change through the confluence of improvisational arts, innovative scholarship, and collaborative action.” The purpose of this talk is to invite partnership and mutual sharing in Critical Studies in Improvisation to imagine uses and expansion in plantation societies.  Using art to confront complicated social issues is a long accepted and well received practice in plantation societies. Drumming, calypso, reggae music and parodies have been used by populations where other forms of expression such as newspapers and even social media are heavily policed to control dissent or calls for justice.