Mind To Make

Stories are as old as the human race. Before we had the written word, we had oral traditions. And somehow the story, in all it's forms and delivery methods, has survived through all that time.

Writer, director, musician and producer Romeo Candido has a story worth listening to. As you can tell from his titles, the man has done some serious work over the years. He’s easily smashed the 10,000 hour rule in a number of fields so it goes without saying that he’s been around the block a few times and has some major insight on being a professional creative.

But you ask, doesn't anyone savvy youtube creator wear so many hats these days? Well, yes and no. Romeo breaks down the distinction. He's also breaking the internet, exposing it to wonderful new, typically fringe artists, as Senior Producer at CBC Arts.

Most importantly, Romeo shares the key to connecting with any audience, at any time, in no matter what your discipline. In his words, it's "the one thing that all artists have ownership of, and the one thing that can make them unique."

In my opinion, few art forms emphasize community more than street dance. In Toronto Emily Law is trying to maintain the origins of those forms and incorporate them into more contemporary settings and performances. Like many professions and art forms, dance commands a great deal of respect and subservience to the limitations of one's body, so Emily is keen to get to work while she's able. 

As dance music has become increasingly more mainstream, the place of the DJ seems to have shifted from one of tastemaker to placeholder.

We are now in a time when festival crowds’ attention is held by one dude, pumping a fist in the air to what may or may not be an pre-recorded set of songs. Where promoters are more interested in social media numbers than track selection, and where non-male DJs get added to shows for the sake of fulfilling diversity requirements.

Despite all of that, there are still young DJs like Toronto native BAMBII, who is more concerned with crafting and curating sets that challenge and excite the audience, and who pays homage to the origins of the music she plays.

BAMBII believes in the power of the club to unite and provide space for those who may not otherwise have a place in society to come together and commune, so maybe it’s not surprising how seriously she takes her craft.

Producer, promoter and performer Todd Simmons, aka Rod Skimmins discusses his experience in curating, producing and promoting events and what it takes to make those events successful now and into the future.

In this time of perfectly branded Instagram accounts, sponsored Facebook live events and heavily curated everything, few artists embody the bravado and brazen attitudes once found to be the hallmark of rock 'n' roll. Though Ali X has chosen not rock but Techno as his central genre, he nevertheless continues to create his music his way, unapologetically coercing his audience to submit to his grimy, funky loops and industrial machine sounds.

After disbanding his Techo/House super group Azari & III, Ali spent time moving around some of music epicentres to settle in Mexico City, where he has found a new home, new community and new co-conspirator in Ximena. Together Ali X x Ximena are educating Mexico's future generations of electronic musicians about what real Techno music is and why it should be thus.

Cartoons are often reserved for the funny pages or maybe the New Yorker, so if you saw some of Michelle LeFade's work for the first time, you could be forgiven for feeling like they don't belong in either. The stories they tell, and the manner in which she tells them don't often resort to word bubbles or ellipses. Instead, it's the line and the thickness of the brushstroke, the hyperbolic nature of the character's bodies or the wry smiles they wear that tell you more about what's going on in the frame.

It's for reasons like these, along with a host of other more varied examples, that I wanted to invite cartoonist, illustrator and visual artist Michelle LeFade onto Mind to Make. I wanted to find out where Michelle got her style from, how it's evolved, what of herself she puts into that work, and where she's diverging from that path?

James Harris (aka Hemingway) is a soft spoken, but clearly thoughtful and contemplative producer. Though he's been through some very real challenges in his life, he continues to see the potential in the universe. James' career is one that's been bolstered by the support of not only his family, but his local and online music and art community as well. I think James is a wonderful example of how discipline and playing well with others can do a lot to produce and sustain amazing work.

This week on Mind to Make, I'm speaking with visual artist and film maker Oliver Husain. Oliver is the creator of MTM logo (yeah!) and his pieces involve image, sculpture, movement and textile. In this interview we discuss the importance of training to underscore your practice. We discuss Oliver’s early influences, his humbling and educational experiences connecting with artists in other cultures and how the spaces you create in and show your work in change the context in which you see that work. For Oliver, perspectives ultimately remain constant despite the inspiratory sources we encounter, but technology is a tool he uses to breath new life into his work. Lastly we discuss the importance of not defining what art means and why being sure and safe are perhaps the biggest obstacles to achieving your artistic goals.

With every new artistic endeavour, we can discover not only a new destination but also the path that led us there. But how to stay on the path, and what path should we take? As someone who has often struggled with these questions, I became increasingly interested in meditation as a means to helping with focus and intention. I found that as with most journeys, it helps to have a guide.

On this week's episode of Mind to Make, Jeremy speaks with artist, musician, film-maker and now meditation & mindfulness instructor/counsellor Josh Reichmann (Tangiers, Paper Bag Records, Hand Drawn Dracula) about how our minds play such an important role in the process of art making. We discuss Josh's introduction into mindfulness, meditation, Buddhism and the various forms and meanings attached to those terms, as well as how they manifest themselves in us and others. We discuss addiction, suffering and finding meaning and compassion both for ourselves and others. We talk about how having a moral or ethical framework can and should be as important as what we are trying to say with our work. We speak about how mindfulness can be a first step to beginning a journey along the middle path of creation and discovery.