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