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Volume 27 Issue 4 - February 2022

Gould's Wall -- Philip Akin's "breadcrumb trail; orchestras buying into hope; silver linings to the music theatre lockdown blues; Charlotte Siegel's watershed moments; Deep Wireless at 20; and guess who is Back in Focus. All this and more, now online for your reading pleasure.

Gould's Wall -- Philip Akin's "breadcrumb trail; orchestras buying into hope; silver linings to the music theatre lockdown blues; Charlotte Siegel's watershed moments; Deep Wireless at 20; and guess who is Back in Focus. All this and more, now online for your reading pleasure.

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Make no<br />

mistake, official<br />

government recognition<br />

brought<br />

with it increased<br />

momentum, clear<br />

benefits and reliable<br />

resources. It<br />

also put official constraints on activities other than the educational<br />

and celebratory. That being said, every <strong>February</strong>, millions of people<br />

across Canada participate in Black History Month events and festivities<br />

that honour the legacy of Black Canadians and their communities.<br />

And then some, celebration over, or duty done, disconnect and turn<br />

to their regular affairs.<br />

It’s a dilemma the organizers grapple with; you can see it in the<br />

careful crafting of the particular theme attached to each year’s event.<br />

The theme for 2021 was “The future is now – a call to action.” And the<br />

<strong>2022</strong> theme is “<strong>February</strong> and Forever: Celebrating Black History today<br />

and every day.”<br />

Here at The WholeNote we have gone back and forth over the years;<br />

there have been years we consciously sought out a Black artist to feature<br />

on our cover in <strong>February</strong>, more than once leaving the individual in<br />

question wondering if their Blackness rather than their art was the<br />

reason for the story. Other times, perversely, we have held an obvious<br />

<strong>February</strong> story over to a different month just so as not to be seen as one<br />

of those organizations that pays dutiful once a year lip-service.<br />

Reading and re-reading that #blacklivesmatter notice in the<br />

doorway of a neighbourhood community arts organization I admire<br />

and respect feels fundamentally different than reading it as some<br />

kind of performative ritual. It’s not a once a year thing, it’s business as<br />

usual. Hopefully the range of stories in this magazine will strike you<br />

the same way.<br />

When the best-laid plans go sideways<br />

The original plan was for this issue to be published on January 20th<br />

in flip-through digital format (kiosk.thewholenote.com), with print<br />

distribution following over the course of the following three to four<br />

days. But the December/January Omicron surge and lockdown here in<br />

Ontario made that impractical.<br />

Close to 800 places our readers were used to picking up the magazine,<br />

pre-pandemic, had become unavailable to us (all in one swoop)<br />

at the start of the pandemic two years ago. By last month we had<br />

managed to reacquire around 300 of them, painstakingly, one by one,<br />

as they became open to the walk-in public again.<br />

But the Omicron surge was a huge setback, for them and for us. As<br />

it was also for a music community, bloody but unbowed, faced (once<br />

again) with having their best laid plans for the resumption of live<br />

performance thrown into disarray.<br />

So we decided to do two things: the first was to delay the publication<br />

date from January 20 to <strong>February</strong> 2 a) to see if the province’s<br />

staged plan for reopening, albeit at severely reduced capacities, would<br />

go ahead, and b) to buy a bit more time for the presenters and musicians<br />

(whose art is the lifeblood in our pages) to figure out what to do<br />

and what to say about it – to replace the divots from their latest pivots,<br />

you could say. We are glad we waited, as you will see,<br />

The second decision we made was way tougher. For the first time in<br />

254 issues, dating back to September 1995, this issue is available only<br />

via our various digital formats and platforms (see our back cover). A<br />

detour we hope not to have to repeat.<br />

Groundhog Day<br />

I am not sure at what point<br />

we also twigged to the fact that<br />

our revised publication date<br />

was Groundhog Day. But it<br />

works for me!<br />

If you are actually reading this<br />

issue on its launch date (Feb 2,<br />

<strong>2022</strong>) then it’s already been six<br />

or seven hours since your local<br />

meteorological groundhog (for<br />

us it’s Wiarton Willie) either<br />

saw their shadow or didn’t. If a<br />

shadow was seen, so the story<br />

goes, then our groundhogs took<br />

the shadow to be some dangerously<br />

contagious lurker of some<br />

kind, and fled back into their lairs,<br />

for a further six weeks of hibernation. Not necessarily a bad thing,<br />

because, barring further setbacks, that takes us to full reopening of<br />

live performance venues!<br />

And if no shadows were seen? Well, we’re all in luck, then. “Oh well<br />

it’s a bit overcast,” we get to say “but smells more like snowdrops than<br />

digital snow!” And off we go, using the eclectic array of performances<br />

on offer in this issue, live and digital, up to the middle of March, to get<br />

our bums in shape for mid-March’s full capacity array of seats.<br />

But, really truly, only if you are good and ready! There’s no shame<br />

in, like our shadow-phobic groundhog, opting for another month and<br />

a half of cautious digital dozing. It’s ok. To each their own winding<br />

path, in their own sweet time. At some point, take my word for it,<br />

you’re going to recognize the moment when (as the song sort-of says),<br />

you are ready: to grab your mask and proof of vaxx and leave your<br />

worries on the doorstep, as you meander on out in search of music,<br />

live and sweet, carried by the air we share.<br />

David Perlman can be reached at publisher@thewholenote.com<br />

thewholenote.com <strong>February</strong> <strong>2022</strong> | 7

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