The music of Winnipeg’s African diaspora will be on display this weekend at the Centre Culturel Franco-Manitobain as the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra presents their latest concert, Mama Hé.
The program features musical traditions from all over the continent, as well as singing in English, French, Attié and Wolof.
The concert’s title comes from its lead featured artist, Western Canadian Music Award winner Kelly Bado.
The Winnipeg singer-songwriter will be showcasing her own songs from previous records in addition to sharing songs from a new album that will be released next March. Bado worked with the orchestra to rearrange her songs and expand them to include every instrument on stage.
While the process was sometimes challenging, it was also very rewarding for Bado. “I think it just takes them out of their usual songs or music that they’ve heard or they’ve worked on to go into that African type of music,” she said in an interview with Nolan Kehler on Morning Light.
“What I mean by challenging is that it’s a different culture, different sounds, different melody. Challenging in the sense that we’re learning something different.”
Bado, who came to Winnipeg from Cote d’Ivoire, incorporates a lot of her musical roots into her music.
“As a child, when we go to the village, we would sit under the tree. And then our auntie would come in and start telling stories and we use those,” she explained. “Our voice is like the first instrument.”
This understanding of the voice is something that Bado has in common with other African artists who will join her and the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra on stage, including local DJ D-Plus. Bado is excited about the new collaborations not only on a concert level, and hopes that this concert can serve as an encouragement to keep pursuing opportunities to work together.
“This is like a concert where we're going to see different artists coming together and I hope that our community, the immigrant community, realizes and maybe decides to do the same and organize something where there's different culture.”
Kelly Bado and the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra take the stage for two concerts on Sunday, November 10, at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. For tickets and more information, you can visit the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra website.
