Produced by Juro Kim Feliz under the Canadian Music Centre Library Residency, Nomadic Sound Worlds is a four-part blog/podcast series exploring Canadian contemporary music through the lens of present-day global migration. A collection of essays named Letters of Transit: Reflections on Exile, Identity, Language, and Loss (ed. André Aciman, 1999) informs and inspires this project, with trajectories branching out from related themes including mobility, displacement, loss, reconciliation of polarized truths, and invention of selves. In this regard, the series will feature selected immigrant Canadian composers whose musical worlds collide with various personal stories of immigration.
A Landscape of Memories through the Music of Hope Lee
published on 18 July 2018
PDF available here: A Landscape of Memories through the Music of Hope Lee (July 2018)
In this pilot episode, we map out a landscape of home and (be)longing amidst different manifestations of loss as we explore the music of Calgary-based composer Hope Lee.
Podcast credits:
Producer and host: Juro Kim Feliz
Additional voices: Janet Sit
Music: Hope Lee (excerpts from Across the veiled distances, Von einem fremden Stern, and Voices in Time)
Additional music: Matthew Fava, Juro Kim Feliz
Editor: Ryan Macfarlane
Noise, (Dis)enchantment, and (Re)birth
PDF available here: Noise, (Dis)enchantment, and (Re)birth (February 2019)
With the success of the Iranian-Canadian Composers of Toronto in their November 2018 opera production (The Journey: Notes of Hope), this episode will explore displacement in three different streams: the nomadic life of composer Sandeep Bhagwati, the exiled disposition of poet Bänoo Zan, and the timely escape from Syria with violinist Wanes Moubayed.
Podcast credits:
Producer and host: Juro Kim Feliz
Music:
Sandeep Bhagwati (Shivaji Park at 6am, Warnings Written on the Wind, Smruti Ranga from the album “Dhvani Sutras,” excerpts from Niemandslandhymnen)
Iranian Canadian Composers of Toronto (The Journey: Notes of Hope)
Additional music: Matthew Fava, Juro Kim Feliz
Additional soundscape recordings: Teresa Barrozo
Editor: Ryan Mcfarlane
Citizenship as Invention
PDF available here: Citizenship as Invention (December 2019)
Three Canadian composers, three different stories. Yet they all came to a point of inventing cultures and ways of belonging. This episode makes sense of the “Canadian” through the experiences of Dorothy Chang, Sergio Barroso, and Gabriel Dharmoo. Soma Chatterjee (York University) also aids us unravel the “Canadian” as a national project, as a political invention.
Podcast credits:
Producer and host: Juro Kim Feliz
Co-producer: Matthew Fava
Additional voices: Priya Shah (for Bharati Mukherjee)
Music:
Sergio Barroso (Jitanjáfora)
Gabriel Dharmoo (Moondraal Moondru, Ninaivanjali, and excerpts of Anthropologies Imaginaires)
Dorothy Chang (excerpts from Lost and Found, and Small and Curious Places)
Additional music: Matthew Fava, Juro Kim Feliz
Editor: Juro Kim Feliz
Special thanks to Soundstreams, Joseph Glaser, Alondra Vega-Zaldivar, Elisha Denburg, Priya Shah, Ryan Macfarlane, Christopher Moore (University of Ottawa), and John Gray (CMC Audio Archivist).
The Canadian Music Centre national library contains some 25,000 works by nearly 900 composers—the CMC Library Residency is designed to shine a light on exciting works. In many ways, the resident artists act as interpreters of the CMC collection, offering a personal glimpse into the historical, cultural, and artistic significance of various pieces. Click here for other publications under this residency.
Juro Kim Feliz 