Interviewing BIPOC Musicians Across the City!

By Nala Haileselassie

This past fall, MMI team got to speak with musicians from our Community Conversations sessions through one-on-one interviews as a part of our larger inquiry on the impact of community music programs on Black and racialized musicians in Toronto. These interviews provided our team with an in-depth understanding of folks’ music journeys, as well as how they have learned to navigate local and global industries within their contexts and backgrounds. Interviewees were engaged with community arts organizations like Small World Music, AfroWaveTO and Community Music Schools of Toronto (CMST). During our interviews, drawings and prompts from the Community Conversations were used as a loose map to guide our conversation. Existing barriers, the environment of peer-to-peer learning, music education, and knowledge sharing acquired from these various programs were key points of our conversations. Each interview began with an invitation for the musician to play one of their songs for us, setting the tone for openness and curiosity between interviewer and interviewee. The musicians then had the opportunity to speak about and explain the River of Experience drawings they created during our Community Conversations sessions.

As these musicians shared their backgrounds in creating and performing music, we were able to connect threads between spaces and places in Toronto that were key sites for music experiences.

Through listening to music with interviewees, I learned about folks’ migration stories and diasporic histories. Many participants found their way to Toronto by way of music, while others made Toronto home out of necessity. These moments of the conversations were my favorite, as I was able to recall different versions of Toronto that once existed, and learn about others that I never knew existed. 

Continued Barriers and Challenges

Throughout the interviews, and as we began to speak about barriers along music journeys, it was clear that personal, systemic, and institutional challenges were significant hurdles all musicians faced. Financial challenges and precarious work were some of the biggest challenges among all of the artists. I learned that many of these musicians often juggled gigs and part-time work, while others focused on music full time. Another key barrier relating to the financial challenges experienced by the musicians was a lack of knowledge around funding systems to support their work. While some folks were familiar with how to access grants, others mentioned only being self-funded with no knowledge around funding systems that could be available to them. Through speaking with these different musicians, I saw that race, status and age stood as key factors in impacting folks’ experiences of the grant system here. 

Another huge challenge mentioned was the lack of performance space in the city, and inequitable fee practices in these spaces. While spaces offer a performance fee, folks mentioned that most fees have not been updated to reflect inflation and the cost of living. The impact of venue closures across the city over the past few years has been felt by these folks, who can now only name a handful of spaces to perform at. Spaces become even more limited for artists who do not perform in English, or those who perform in specific genres such as Dancehall and Reggae. What seemed present between everyone I spoke to was that musicians want to be able to sustain themselves doing what they love, and the need for better structural support across the music industry is vital to keeping Toronto’s diverse music scenes alive and well.

Community Music Supports

While many of the barriers we spoke about impacted how these musicians participate in Toronto’s music landscape, almost everyone mentioned that community music programs have helped them stay informed and connected with other musicians in the city. Folks highlighted that incubator programs and related programming provided basic knowledge on the music industry and good business practices for independent musicians in Toronto. This information has been key, specifically for migrant artists who are navigating many of these environments for the first time. The aspect of horizontal learning in these community music programs has strengthened bonds for some of these artists. As our conversations continued, what became clear to me was that these artists were all sustaining different music pockets in the city. Between folks, numerous genres, languages and instruments were present, and many were actually well connected to each other, either playing together, or supporting each other through attending shows. Networks between musicians served not only as a community-building effort, but also as a way to share gigs and important information on fees and practices. In many ways, these musicians have created informal knowledge sharing structures even after attending these community music programs, staying connected as peers working alongside each other in Toronto’s music landscape. 

Getting to sit down and learn about the music practices and experiences of these awesome folks over the past few months has been key in shaping the direction of our upcoming collaborations and research activities. In the next few months, we will be getting in touch with graduates from Small World Music’s Incubator program to document their recent experiences. We are also looking towards producing output of this work, highlighting all of the conversations and insights that these amazing people have shared with us, hoping to elevate their journeys and experiences. 

Stay tuned, and take a listen to some of the amazing music we heard during these interviews to see what folks have been vibing to in the city…