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Beat by Beat | World ViewWM 2.0: PossibleRoads AheadANDREW TIMARImay not be alone in feeling that this liminal seasonal periodbridging late summer and early fall is a time fraught with angst.This season in-between is tinged with regret at the passing of a toobriefand perhaps not-idle-enough summer. All too soon brisk falldays blow responsibility down our necks. The feeling is felt even bythose much too old to clearly recall the bittersweet frisson of returningto school the first week of September.Welcome back to our coverage of world music in The WholeNote.Welcome also to the ever-evolving notions of what performersand concert producerspresent as worldTal National.music, to those whocontest its very existenceand to my currentthoughts on suchconcerts in SouthernOntario neighbourhoods.Add to that listanother element integralto the category’s success:its audience receptionand fan support. Given,however, that I writehere about concerts tocome, you’ll have to readabout it in The WholeNoteblog reviews.Some writers, dissatisfiedwith the existing term for the present state of music beyondworldbeat fusions, have offered to tweak, if not entirely to rebrand it.“World Music 2.0” is one such proposed tag. Noise Next Door, a documentaryfilm to be released in 2014, explores the present unease withworld music as a marketing term and genre by examining the artists’music, ideas, influences, the collaboration process and the technologyused to “inspire the new world music generation of creators.”One group that has contested the world music tag as patentlyEurocentric (the commercial term’s actual geographic origin), with adistinct tendency to relegate those within the category as “the other,”is the exciting Ottawa-based aboriginal DJ and video “powwowstep” group A Tribe Called Red. They will be appearing in The MusicGallery’s “X Avant Festival” in October 2013. I’ll be writing more aboutthem in the next issue.Information for the next two events arrived too late to be includedin our listings: September 6, Jayme Stone, whom The Globe and Maildubbed “the Yo-Yo Ma of the banjo,” presents a concert supportinghis new album at the Music Gallery. Stone is one musician who justmay be comfortable with the world music label. The two-time JUNOAward-winning banjoist and composer clearly relishes the globalthreads which inspire many tracks on his albums. His new CD, forexample, is a sonic travelogue of imaginary geographies traversingwhat has been called the “cinnamon route through Persia and India,”and Stone elsewhere re-arranges melodies he collected in WestAfrica. His Music Gallery concert also includes a concerto for banjoand chamber symphony written for him by Andrew Downing, thegroup’s cellist. Stone’s versatile group is rounded out by top Torontomusicians and by guest vocalist Miranda Mullholland. And onSeptember 28, the Toronto taiko group, Nagata Shachu, drives downthe Gardiner Expressway to set the hearts of Hamilton audiencespounding at their concert presented by the Matapa Music and ArtsOrganization. Their physically demanding music will resound at theMolson Canadian Studio, Hamilton Place.September 30 at 12:15, Music Mondays presents “From Ragasto Rhythm” performed by Autorickshaw, another Toronto worldmusic fixture, at the Church of the Holy Trinity. The Autorickshawtrio of Dylan Bell, Ed Hanley and Suba Sankaran will be joined bysitarist, guitarist and vocalist Chris Hale, performing arrangementsof North and South Indian classical songs plus their special brand ofIndo-fusion.Small World Music Festival:September 26 to October 6With world music as part of its name, the Small World Music Societyhas long been the most active presenter of live international-flavouredmusic concerts in the GTA. In its own words, SWMS gives a “platformto dozens of developing Canadian artists of diverse backgrounds,providing a space for cross-cultural bridge-building, education andunderstanding.” Small World estimates it has presented roughly 400Jayme Stone.events since 1997, an impressive figure by any standard.In a late August telephone interview Small World executive directorand curator Alan Davis enthused about the company’s nascentcommunity presentation space, projected to open next year (moreof that later). He was also eager to get the word out about the 12thannual Small World Music Festival. Running from September 26 untilOctober 6 in multiple downtown Toronto venues, this is its signaturefestival. In his festival press release Davis fingered one problem withthe way our city’s vaunted multiculturalism plays out in world musicpresentations. “Let’s face it” he began, “as we get comfortable in ourrespective neighbourhoods, most of us need a little help — and perhapsa nudge — to enjoy new aspects of our famed diversity.” Contentmentand even complacency with one or two musical genres to the exclusionof all the others is an aspect of human nature familiar to mostworld music presenters who take on the daunting job of catering tomultiple and shifting audiences.Small World’s gentle nudge to local audiences begins September 26at the Lula Lounge with a Festival Opening Party. It features TalNational, reputedly the most popular group in Niger, West Africa.Drawing on regional musical genres of highlife, Afrobeat, soukousand “desert blues,” generously infused with transnational rock, theysing in Niger’s main languages of Zarma and Hausa, as well as inFrench, the colonial language. At home Tal National’s shows last untildaybreak; when will their last set wrap at Lula?40 | September 1 – October 7, 2013 thewholenote.com